By Nicole Limpert
NorthBay Health is a non-profit healthcare organization located in Solano County, California. The system was founded by physicians and community leaders in 1959 with the opening of Intercommunity Hospital in Fairfield. Intercommunity Hospital was renamed NorthBay Medical Center and has expanded from 32 beds to 154 beds.
Over the years, NorthBay Health has grown its services and facilities, including opening the 50-bed NorthBay VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville and two Urgent Care Centers. Today, NorthBay Health Medical Center and NorthBay VacaValley Hospital are both Magnet-certified from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, recognizing their excellence in nursing.
The entire NorthBay Health system is served by a single call center with a small and dedicated team of agents and managers. The organization decided to work with a new vendor after its previous vendor required pricey yearly upgrades that didn’t offer any benefits. “The financial costs were incurred without getting additional or up-to-date functionality,” says Terese Davis, MBA, CHAM, Director of Patient Access & Communications, working in NorthBay Health’s Finance Division/Revenue Cycle Services. “Over the years, it felt like we had been paying annually for the same old system we had when we went live.”
Manual to Automated Alarms and Code Calls
Many of the workflows done by NorthBay Health’s agents were manual, including their alarm and code call processes. They needed call center software that was more efficient and easier to use. Terese explains, “When an alarm came in on our old system, we had to remember which hospital location it was for, which keystrokes to use for the instructions to pop, and then we had to follow them to process the code. It was a cumbersome process, and if you missed a step because you’re reading as you’re trying to type, it was incredibly stressful because we’re dealing with critical patient care and patient lives.” Felicita adds, “We were looking for a way to take these manual steps and put them in a form or a template that could guide the operators through the alarm and code process, so they wouldn’t have to think about it.”
However, updating the alarm panels to work with new technology wasn’t a straightforward process due to California’s stringent requirements for changing anything related to fire alarm panels or duress buttons. Christopher explains, “California is unique due to the earthquake activity and seismic regulations. Therefore, anytime you open up a wall, it involves a state agency and permit process, which is expensive because usually an architect comes in to do renderings. Then, it all goes through an approval process, which can be lengthy. It’s designed to protect our patients and ensure we have a safe physical environment for them, but it can be a challenge when you just want to make a simple cable change or move something that’s wall-mounted.”
When thinking about interoperability and data flow, it’s easy to forget that sometimes the systems that need to exchange information are analog. They were never designed or built for a digital environment. Due to its older alarm configuration, this was exactly the situation at NorthBay Health.
People from the vendor’s on-site support worked with the NorthBay Health team and took a deep dive into their alarm system. Thanks to their efforts and decades of experience, the vendor found a solution that enabled the analog alarm board to share information with the new call center software without involving the state. This fix saved a substantial amount of money and time.
The operators at NorthBay Health handle more than 20 codes, as well as serial and panic alarms. Monica Belo, Sr. Systems Analyst, Revenue Cycle Applications at NorthBay Health, comments, “The time it takes to activate an alarm notification from our console went from 90 seconds to less than 10 seconds.” Terese adds, “We used to manually type information for our overhead page – ‘code blue, room X’ – before we could get the code out. Now it’s seamless. We don’t have to do any of that because the system is pushing all the information for us.
The application processes those emergency alarms so quickly and efficiently that our operators don’t even have to think about it. Anybody could sit down and process a code using our new software.”
Christopher adds, “Obviously, these examples are some of the most critical things we do when time is of the essence. So, to see that kind of improvement is exactly what we want to achieve when we make upgrades. Plus, the alarm integration means there’s one less thing our clinicians have to think about when they’re taking care of patients. We now have a system that works for medical staff, too. It’s easy to use, intuitive, and allows them to spend more time focusing on the patient and the care they’re giving.”
“One of our operator leads is involved with the fire drill process for the organization.” continues Monica. “A real fire alarm came through shortly after installing the software and went right to her console. She activated it, called 911, and then messaged Terese to ask if she had missed something because the new workflow was too easy. All the prompts are there and integrated. You don’t have to remember what to do during an emergency.” The process is seamless to the operator who handles the alarm. In the fire alarm example, Felicita had already programmed fire alarms to go to “code red” automatically and established a specific script for the agent to follow. Felicita says, “In addition, we built redundant paging for the engineering team and anyone responding to these alarms. So, by the time PBX starts to activate the code, a page has already been sent to the appropriate individuals. Scripted messages that pull information such as location and alarm type are done for each alarm.”
“Alarm and code calls make your heart pound,” says Terese. “But processing those calls is seamless now, and that stress has been removed. I think that ease of mind is the biggest benefit we’ve received.”
Managing the alarm system on their own was an enormous improvement compared to their old process. “We were dependent on our previous vendor to make changes to the alarms. In the past, adding a new alarm came with a price tag,” says Felicita. “We had to get budget approval and coordinate with the vendor – it took months. Now, we are empowered to make updates ourselves whenever we need them.”
Monica adds, “Our new vendor was awesome with our implementation and getting our complicated scripts ready. Even if it was a tough ask, they would say OK, we got you, we’ll be back in a week to give you what you need. And sure enough, they were complete and ready for us to test next time we met.”
Overcoming Integration Challenges
Implementing new technologies always presents challenges. Many hospitals use analog alarm systems and technologies from multiple vendors, which can present especially tricky scenarios when integrating new tech. Conducting a full IT assessment of the call center’s current technology is paramount.
Felicita states, “Our on-site support was incredibly helpful. Our vendor was here taking inventory of our IT assets, recording short training videos, and troubleshooting issues unique to our situation. Their mindset wasn’t just, ‘we’re going to implement this.’ It was also informing us about our existing hardware and software, and teaching us how it functions. I’m an analyst, but I’m not familiar with hardware. However, that all changed by the time we were done.”
“Felicita and our vendor’s on-site support had a great relationship. They were able to document so many helpful details,” comments Monica. “This isn’t my area of expertise, but thanks to their documentation, I was able to update and add alarms to the system on my own when Felicita was on vacation.”
Christopher explains why he feels the best products are the ones he never hears about, “Usually, if a situation has been escalated to me, then you know there’s some issue that needs executive involvement. One of the great things about our installation is that I got the status reports and read them, but I didn’t have to step in at any point or have a conversation with the vendor. It seems like the teams worked really well together.”
Integrating On-Call Schedules
One of NorthBay Health’s goals was to integrate its third-party vendor on-call schedules into the system used by everyone else in the organization. The team engaged leadership and those who support the physicians early in the process, because changing the on-call scheduling procedure was an important patient safety concern that affected departments throughout the organization.
Monica says, “We are now able to use just our new vendor’s app to integrate and update the third-party vendor schedules. No one has to manage two or three different schedules or manually input shifts into different scheduling platforms. The app is easy for operators and hospital staff to use.”
Other departments within NorthBay Health also began using the app for their own on-call schedules. Felicita and Monica built shells for all departments, imported their schedules, and put them in the app. Next, they trained people from other departments to use the solution.
Monica comments, “One person we trained would previously spend two or three days at the end of the month getting on-call schedules ready for the next month. Now she can get the work done in two to three hours. She then pushes the schedules to the departments so they can manage their own schedules.”
Initially, some users were resistant to the changes. “It can be difficult for some people to adjust to any new system,” says Monica. “But once they discovered how much easier the app was to use, they loved it and became champions of it by encouraging others to use it. It was a really big win.”
Simplifying Equipment Maintenance
Server maintenance used to be a long process. “It would take months to complete server maintenance, and our old vendor didn’t always seem to understand our workflow,” says Felicita. “We have the skillset to do much of the work ourselves. Now we can get in there and just do it; implementing IT changes for PBX has been a lot faster. We still have coaching and support from our new vendor when needed, which is important to us.”
“We were doing maintenance on our system every six weeks with our previous vendor.” explains Monica. “It would result in two or three hours of downtime and require one or two analysts, a supervisor, and our technical team to join a call to ensure everything ran smoothly. It was a nightmare. Now, the server jumps from one to another in 30 seconds compared to three hours. I mean, who’s not going to want that? It’s been amazing.”
NorthBay Health uses Cisco phones. The operator team used them in the past and would have to attend Cisco maintenance calls every month or two. However, the team now uses our new vendor’s product and doesn’t use the Cisco phones. Monica says, “Our Cisco team no longer has to coordinate with us for maintenance. We just get a call that informs us when they’re going to do some maintenance. It doesn’t affect our operators, and they don’t have to go into downtime. We also no longer have to wake up at 3:00 a.m. due to the time differences to do this maintenance. It’s been a godsend.”
The second part of this case study will appear in the February 2026 edition of AnswerStat.
Nicole Limpert is a marketing content writer for Amtelco