Hospital VoIP Phone Systems: Prices, Features, and Benefits

Everything you need to know about hospital phone systems, in one place…

Hospital phone systems play a huge part in both external and internal communications. Whether you’re calling patients about test results, or exchanging important information between doctors and nurses, the right phone system can help you boost hospital productivity and improve your patient services.

In this guide, we’ll answer all your questions about the features, benefits, and costs of hospital phone systems. It’s a one-stop shop.

How do we know all this, though? It’s our job – we’re experts in workplace communications and we’ve carried out extensive research into the best hospital phone systems, selecting the five best companies in Canada.

By the end of this guide, you’ll have all the information you need to make the right decision for your healthcare company in terms of workplace communication.

The Benefits of a VoIP Hospital Phone System

Hospital phone systems can benefit your healthcare business in many ways. Below, we’ll explain the top four. Phone systems can help you:

✓ Cut Costs

With VoIP (voice over internet protocol) technology, hospital phone systems use the internet rather than landlines to make calls, which is much cheaper to run. You’ll still need to pay for the actual phone system, but you’ll use your hospital’s current internet network instead of paying per-minute fees to make and take phone calls. In short, VoIP can help your hospital cut bills.

✓ Improve Services for Patients

Hospital phone systems can do more than just connect you with patients. With VoIP systems, you can contact multiple patients at one time, organise your call flow by priority, and track the status of calls to help reduce the time patients spend waiting on the phone. With these features, your patients should have much shorter waiting times.

✓ Boost Workplace Efficiency

Modern healthcare phone systems integrate your communication methods into a single platform. Having everything in one place makes it even easier to collaborate with colleagues, share information with doctors and nurses, and enable remote workers to contact the hospital from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection.

✓ Save Time on Installation

Time is extremely precious while running a hospital. Thankfully, it’s quick and easy to set up VoIP for hospitals, because all you need is your current computer network. If you choose a cloud-hosted VoIP system, you’ll already have everything you need in order to install the system (i.e. the internet) and there won’t be any time spent building and installing hardware.

The Best Hospital Phone Systems

From our research and years of experience, we know that the five best hospital phone systems in Canada are:

1. RingCentral

Top 3 Features for Hospitals

HITRUST/CSF Certification

This certification will ensure your medical staff can exchange information on a secure platform on any device – handy if you’ve got a team out on the field. There are seven layers of data and physical security, while third-party audits ensure the system never weakens.

Desktop and Mobile App

With all communication tools grouped together in one app, your staff can make calls, send messages, and start video meetings all in one place, either from a desktop or smartphone.

Reliable Service

Thanks to electronic prevention systems in its data centers, a RingCentral hospital phone system can withstand data loss or service interruption, which is particularly important if your hospital sits within one of Canada’s natural disaster hotspots.

2. 8×8

Top 3 Features for Hospitals

Secure and Compliant Certifications

8×8 boasts an impressive range of security and compliance certificates, ensuring your most valuable hospital data is kept safe. For instance, 8×8’s hospital phone systems are all HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant, FISMA compliant, and meet the FCC requirements for protecting Consumer Proprietary Networking Information.

Unified Communications

Chatting, web conferencing, and document sharing mean your medical staff can share findings and surgery outcomes from any location in the world that has an internet connection. Doctors can also hold video consultations with patients, which could be more convenient for both parties, especially considering the ongoing effects of the pandemic.

Cloud Contact Center

With this feature, you can take the pressure off your receptionists by having patients automatically connect with the ward or person they require. All the necessary patient data is held securely on the Cloud Contact Center, which can be updated in real time to ensure your staff has the most recent information.

3. Vonage Business Solutions

Top 3 Features for Hospitals

SMS Alerts

With the integration of SMS alerts, the system can send automated text messages to patients, letting them know when their appointments are due. You can also use SMS to market your services to people living within a set distance from you.

Mobility and Productivity Tools

On-call doctors and nurses out in the field can use their Vonage number instead of their mobile number, meaning they never have to reveal their private contact details to patients. The Vonage system also enables them to access medical drives for recording data.

Chatbots

The Smart Numbers feature means you can enable chatbots to make your hospital communication system even more bespoke, and more useful for patients looking for quick information.

4. Nextiva

Top 3 Features for Hospitals

Impressive Network Reliability

Nextiva customers experienced zero outages in 2019, with the company boasting a 99.999% server uptime. This should give you and your staff peace of mind, knowing you’ll never drop an important call or lose valuable information.

Mobile Communication

Nextiva enables doctors and nurses to stay in contact with other hospital staff wherever they happen to be via a mobile app. The app displays which colleagues are online and offline, ensuring surgeries and procedures aren’t interrupted.

Onboarding Support

Nextiva provides comprehensive onboarding support, helping you migrate existing phone numbers to the new system with ease. During our research, we also found that Nextiva was particularly easy to use.

5. GoToConnect

Top 3 Features for Hospitals

CRM Integration

Integrate CRM systems such as Salesforce and Zendesk to improve the patient experience. Staff on the telephones will be able to access their patients’ data and provide a more personalized, knowledgeable interaction.

Easy Call Routing

GoToConnect’s auto attendant and visual call routing system make it quick and easy to plan where calls are directed. This means you can ensure that patient phone calls go straight to the right people, instead of bogging down your busy staff.

Integration with Medical Records

It’s easy to integrate GoToConnect with your medical records system, so your staff can see a patient’s relevant information while taking calls – cutting down on time spent unearthing records while on the phone.

Types of Hospital Phone System

There are two types of hospital phone systems. Firstly, there’s VoIP (voice over internet protocol), the cloud-based option that enables you to speak to people over the internet.

Secondly, there’s PBX (private branch exchange). Like VoIP, modern PBX (known as IP PBX) uses the internet to support calls, but some PBX systems can also enable you to switch between using the internet and using the local exchange. In this case, you’ll need to host your PBX system on-premise, rather than in the cloud or on a remote server.

The Benefits of a VoIP Hospital Phone System

Because many VoIP phone systems store your data on the cloud (i.e. on the internet rather than on physical servers), you’ll most likely never lose any hospital data. VoIP systems are cheap to set up and come with automatic software updates, making them really easy to run.

The overall cost of VoIP for hospitals depends on the features and number of users you’ll have on the system. But here’s a general idea of what you can expect to pay in terms of total and monthly fees:

• 16 VoIP phones with standard features: $8,000 – $30,000 all in
• 64 VoIP phones with installation fees: $35,000 – $50,000 all in
• RingCentral’s VoIP price plans: $29.99 – $54.99 per user per month

The Benefits of a PBX Hospital Phone System

Hosting your data onsite through a PBX phone system means you’ll have more control over the finer details. Because you aren’t relying on a VoIP company’s cloud-based system, you can create a bespoke telecommunications solution for your hospital, and have complete control over how it works.

Similar to VoIP hospital phone systems, the overall cost of your PBX system depends on what your hospital needs. However, you can expect to pay around $1,000 per user for the entire PBX system. 

The Cost of Hospital Phone System Installation

As with any cost related to hospital phone systems, the installation fees will vary depending on a number of factors, including the company and location of your hospital. However, the average costs in Canada are:

• 5 – 15 phones: $1,200
• 16 – 25 phones: $2,200
• 25 – 50 phones: $3,000
• 50+ phones: $50 per phone

The easiest way to get an exact price for your hospital phone system is by comparing bespoke quotes from trusted companies. We can get you started.

Simply use our free comparison tool to tell us what you need (it only takes a minute), and we’ll match you with phone companies that can best help your healthcare business. They’ll then be in touch with you, offering no-obligation quotes and answers to your questions.