Santa Barbara County Public Health
Background
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department (SBCPH) deals with health-related issues and the dissemination of information to health-related agencies and organizations throughout Santa Barbara County. The department deals, among other things, with disease control and providing the public and health care providers with health alerts and other pertinent information. SBCPH employs approximately 600 individuals.
The Problem
Santa Barbara County Public Health does business with hundreds of public and private health care providers on a daily basis. The department has frequent communications with over 1,000 contacts. As an instrument of the government, and dealing with the serious business of disease control and public health, the ability to quickly and accurately provide information to those dependent upon that service is crucial to the community. SBCPH was in a situation that did not optimally provide for those whom they were responsible.
In using a proprietary database, the department was limited to a single person who had access to the contact database; if that person was absent, the system was rendered useless. The database simply did not integrate with its system. Throughout daily correspondences, the staff could neither determine nor decipher the history of contacts and the mode in which they had been contacted (be it email, phone, or fax). SBCPH was operating in an environment that provided the minimum in functionality.
In addition to contact management shortfalls, SBCPH was not adequately prepared for the completion or dissemination of reports. The system they had in place was far from robust and equally un-user-friendly.
The Solution
With the implementation of GroupLink’s ContactWise, the Santa Barbara County Public Health staff has seen immediate and dramatic changes in the way they conduct business. With the added tools ContactWise provides, SBCPH employees can quickly and effectively communicate with their many community partners. A Senior Systems Analyst for SBCPH, said, “The ‘groups’ and ‘filters’ options in ContactWise are a great success for us. We use it very effectively in our email/fax broadcasts.”
The ability to quickly sort out necessary contacts for a specific release saves SBCPH a great deal of time. Santa Barbara staff reported that said it is now simple to gather eight or nine groups, send out our release, and then use the filter function to send out the same information to doctors specializing in particular fields.
“This new system has really helped us take the burden of contact management off of one person in disease control. Now other people, in other programs, can access these contacts and fully utilize the system for effective information sharing,” said Santa Barbara staff. “ContactWise is the solution we had been looking for and provides us the ability to customize the system to our needs. By implementing this software to our specific preferences, we have satisfied a significant number of our needs in contact management.”
Conclusion
By implementing GroupLink’s ContactWise, Santa Barbara County Public Health has provided the agency the means to more efficiently and effectively handle daily responsibilities. By opening the channels of contact management to those who can facilitate productivity, SBCPH has greatly enhanced its mode of operation. GroupLink’s ContactWise has provided Santa Barbara County Public Health the means to more effectively serve their community.
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