• Removing overhead paging and piped in music.
• Removing institutionalized signage and labeling (such as closet and bathroom labels).
• Removing medicine carts and large centralized nursing stations.
• Discontinuing long term use of patient monitoring systems that use audible alarms.
• Eliminating mass-purchased furniture displayed throughout the building.

Dalcon’s unique patient care communications solution, Dalcon Alert, is designed to help nursing homes make several of these changes.  As a result, facilities using the Dalcon Alert system will meet numerous new CMS Homelike Environment guidelines, and their quality of patient care will drastically increase.

Dalcon Alert provides a communications platform that eliminates the need for:

1. Overhead Paging
2. Audible patient monitoring alarms
3. A large centralized nursing station

How Does Dalcon Alert Eliminate Audible Alarms?

Dalcon Alert is a patient care communications system that has several features.  The system provides Remote Patient Monitoring and Alarm Management by integrating with patient monitoring devices including but not limited to:

• bed exit pads
• bed fall pads
• IV-Pumps
• Patient Nurse Calls

When an alert is created by any integrated device, Dalcon Alert routes that alert to a remote nursing station where it can be actively managed on a PC monitor using Dalcon Alert’s alert management software.  Dalcon Alert also sends that alert to select staff carrying fully functional wireless phones via text message, so they are immediately made aware of that alert regardless of their location—and without the use of audible alarms.

How Does Dalcon Alert Reduce the need for Overhead Paging and a Large Centralized Nursing Station?

Equipping vital staff with wireless phones is a central piece of the Dalcon Alert system.  These phones allow staff to receive important alerts regardless of their location.  Caregivers can be reached remotely by phone, vastly eliminating the need for overhead paging.

A key component of the successful implementation of a decentralized nursing station system is staff communication.  Dalcon Alert provides staff with an effective decentralized communications platform, built around fully functional wireless phones.  Also, Dalcon Alert’s alert management software is accessed via a browser, and there is no limit to how many computers can be logged on to it at once.  Thus, each decentralized nursing station can be actively managing alerts at any given time.

For those of who have never heard of Skype, it’s a service that allows users to make free calls from their computers over the internet to other Skype users; and ultra-low cost calls to landlines and mobile phones globally.  Asterisk is a popular open source PBX system that manages the routing of calls in addition to other features including unified communications.  Companies like Dalcon provide the software that makes it easy to put this valuable new communications tool to use.

The Advantages of Skype and Asterisk

The main advantage of Skype and Asterisk is of course, value.  Both Skype and Asterisk have been well known in the VoIP world as low cost alternatives to more traditional forms of communication.  The growths of these applications have been spectacular, and as more businesses learn that the value they bring doesn’t come with a sacrifice in quality, the more they will continue to grow.

Skype to Asterisk, using software like the Dalcon Communications Manager, allows your company to:

1. Make free calls globally from any phone on the Asterisk PBX to Skype users.
2. Make low cost domestic and international calls (either with unlimited minutes subscriptions or low costs such as 2.1 cents per minute to many global destinations).
3. Allow Skype users to call you on a Skype user address, receive the call on your Asterisk PBX and then route the call to any extension , IVR/auto attendant, queue, or even outside cell phone.
4. Place a Skype button on your website so Skype users can call your company instantly from their computer.
5. Allow Skype users to make a free Skype call from anywhere in the world into a conference bridge on the Asterisk system so that you can have a mix of Skype, internal, and external phone users on one conference call.
6. Purchase a Skype-In landline phone number for your company ($5/month) in most any city worldwide. Calls to that number can ring into your company’s Asterisk/DCM system and be routed in any way you choose.

How it works

Once you have an Asterisk-based PBX, such as the DCM, you can order Skype for Asterisk connectors and sign up for your Skype business account.

Now your options are limitless.  You can make Skype calls using softphones and desktop phones. Asterisk can be configured in many different ways to automatically switch between Skype calls and normal calls.  For example, you might set the system up so that dialing *9 on a desktop phone allows you to “SkypeOut”—in other words, make a Skype call out to an international landline or mobile phone.  Another possibility could be simply configuring Asterisk to automatically SkypeOut when you dial a number with an international country code.  Using DCM you can set up any Skype user as an extension on your system and when you dial that extension on your desk phone it automatically routes the call to the Skype user over the Skype-to-Skype network.

In the old days, a PBX was a specialty electronic device with one job – to manage your internal phone system and connect to the dial tone provided by the phone company. The computer data network in your hospital was completely separate from your PBX and phones. Each of the two networks required separate wiring, a separate support team (whether internal or external) and there was no ability to share data between the computer and the phone. That has all changed – creating great opportunities for savings and efficiency.

With Unified Communications, you now can have one physical network supported internally by your administrative team with help from the same team that supports your data network today. You can deliver appropriate data from your computers to your phone system. Download (password required)