Farranfore Medical Centre (FMC) and Dr Eamonn Shanahan, have been delivering vital medical services to a 7,000+ strong community for over 23 years. Invested in the future health of rural Ireland, FMC delivers training to future healthcare providers across general practice and nursing.

The Shanahan family have delivered medical services in Farranfore since the 1920s. Since then, they have followed a belief that services, medical or otherwise, need to continuously modernise ideas and technologies to build better patient / customer relationships. 
Having not upgraded their phone system since the early 1990s, it was time for a change.

Dr Eamonn Shanahan
“We needed a phone system that saved us a lot of work and money as well as preventing customer confusion.”
Dr Shanahan reached out to Blueface for bill analysis, business phone system and hardware but before that, a site readiness assessment. After all, Blueface is dedicated to finding the right cloud phone fit for every business.

Service Delivery
The Medical Centre were originally customers of Telecom Eireann (now eir) with a business phone system ran through a physical PBX machine that lacked modern features. Additionally, the on premises equipment was difficult to service due to availability and cost of spare parts. 

The throwback supplier and soon-to-be-obsolete PBX System were only part of the expenditure issue. FMC, like many businesses with old systems, were paying way more than they had expected for calls and unused features / lines totaling €650 per month.

Dr Eamonn Shanahan, FMC 
“We had a look at the bills and we had been paying for services we haven’t been using for years. We were even paying for ISDN lines!”
Dr. Shanahan, being an advocate of future planning, contacted Blueface to remove old lines, deactivate chugging machines, and cut the high communication infrastructure cost with a contemporary cloud phone system.

To ensure that FMC received the same high quality they deliver to their patients, Blueface worked with partners John Quirke of Radley Cashel Business Systems and Billy O’Sullivan, to assess their site’s cloud PBX readiness.

Once the site readiness was confirmed, the Blueface team got to work under a tight two week delivery schedule.

Positive Results
Farranfore Medical Centre, Blueface customer since early 2019, have embraced their reliable, feature-packed, cloud phone system. The team has been taking advantage of real-time call flow management, paging, disaster recovery and special services such as patient intercom.

Dr Eamonn Shanahan, FMC 
“We are scratching the surface but managing call flows, call forwarding, patient intercom, dialling out using our main line number (over extension) are some of our favourites. Being able to reach patients from my mobile via the Softphone App linked to my deskphone has offered amazing flexibility.”
An important change for the practice is the addition of phone system data that has helped identify busier periods. This data has helped Dr Shanahan make smart hiring decisions .

Dr Eamonn Shanahan, FMC 
“Detailed call data, such as incoming attempted calls vs. missed calls, allowed us to make a data-driven staff hire – a receptionist – to help manage high call volume periods – particularly for winter.” 
The real surprise for Dr Shanahan, however, is that this reliability, feature set and ease-of-use increases patient engagement while decreases cost of communication infrastructure.

Dr Eamonn Shanahan, FMC 
“With the old line-based system, we were paying north of €650 per month. Our new system offers features like the Softphone App and a new hardware estate for less than €350pm. A fully transparent system for half the price.”
Ultimately, reliability is the cornerstone of Blueface’s business whether it is our people or our technology – our mission to enable better business communications starts with reliability. This requires a consultative approach to business phone system delivery – from the initial sales inquiry to system training and beyond.

Dr Eamonn Shanahan, FMC 
“Reliability? 100%. Everything is working perfectly. I think for the vast majority of users, the important part is that they pick up the phone and it just works and that’s what your system does.”
Thank you to Dr Shanahan and the good people at Farranfore Medical Centre for choosing Blueface and continuing to deliver the best quality medical care for 100 years to come.

Inspired by Farranfore Medical Centre story? Discuss your business communications with our experts today.