Located in Adelaide, South Australia, Hampstead Health is dedicated to delivering high quality, comprehensive, integrated, multidisciplinary primary health care services to the people of the local community.
According to Toni Jones, Human Resources Manager at Hampstead Health Family Practice, the facility has a very large and busy reception area that is often quite noisy, making quick and clear communications with incoming clients a challenge. Add to this normal operating environment the Covid-era required installation of Perspex Safety Screens and you end up with an environment that further reduces speech intelligibility.
“We needed a solution that would protect the health and safety of our clients and team and improve direct, two-way communication in the reception area,” she explained.
To design and install the right solution for Hampstead Health, Jones approached their reseller AV Australia, who then turned to Exertis ProAV Australia, their specialist commercial AV distribution partner in the region. After consulting with the customer on site, Exertis recommended the Contacta Bridge Bar system that is part of the Window Intercom System family. Exertis installed a demo system for the customer and, after Hampstead Health recognized the advantages of the system after trialing it for a week, then recommended AJS Lighting Sound Events to serve as the local installation partner on the project.
The Contacta Bridge Bar System provides full duplex communication for staff and customers/patients, including an integrated hearing loop for customers wearing hearing aids. The Window Intercom Systems counter the loss in speech intelligibility caused by the installation of Perspex Safety screens at counters in Healthcare, Retail, Airports, Banking and Ticketing environments, anywhere with a Service Counter and Perspex screen.
According to Exertis ProAV Australia General Manager Nick Cocks, “In today’s Covid environment, the addition of Perspex safety screens can mean a loss of up to 12dB in sound level, combining that with protective masks eliminating the ability to lip read, the capacity to understand speech clearly is greatly diminished for both staff and patients.
“The Contacta Window Intercom Systems allow for speech intelligibility to be increased so that customers and staff do not need to raise their voices or speak around the screens. The other advantage is that the amplified sound field is limited to the speakers’ vicinity, so customer confidentiality is maintained, which is vitally important in the health and banking sectors,” Cocks emphasized.
Now that the new Contacta system is installed and fully operational, Hampstead’s Jones is seeing a higher quality of two-way communication between staff and clients. “Since installing the Contacta Bridge Bar System, communicating with our patients is so much easier. There is no longer any need to raise voices to be heard and, most importantly, the reception staff are extremely happy with the system.”
