Cedars-Sinai Health System Selects The Beryl Companies to Build and Manage a State-of-the-Art Customer Interaction Center.

Business Editors & Health Writers

LOS ANGELES--(BW HealthWire)--Aug. 21, 2000

Cedars-Sinai, one of the world's best known and most highly regarded medical institutions, has selected The Beryl Companies to develop and staff a Customer Interaction Center on behalf of the 877-bed medical center.

This unique combination of call center and Internet services will make information and referral available to the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Consumers will have the freedom to communicate with the medical center in whatever medium they feel most comfortable ... from telephone to Internet to e-mail. In all channels, specially trained Beryl representatives will provide a full array of services including physician referral, community education class registration and information about various Cedars-Sinai areas of excellence.

Most notably, consumers who seek information via the Internet will experience a greatly enhanced capability when they visit www.cedars-sinai.edu. A visitor seeking a physician referral, for example, will be able to engage in a live, online chat with a Beryl call advisor, discussing preferences and family needs. What's more, if the user is looking for specific healthcare information, the Beryl advisor has the capability to "push" additional Web content directly to the consumer's desktop.

"We are excited to be working with Beryl in expanding this personalized service to our community," said Grace Cheng, vice president of marketing and public relations for Cedars-Sinai. "The Beryl team brings to Cedars-Sinai a wealth of experience in handling large volumes of healthcare-related inquiries and, most importantly, a shared commitment to our mission and core values."

Until now, Cedars-Sinai has handled its call services in-house. The outsourced agreement with Beryl expands those capabilities, allows for integration with the Internet and, for the first time, makes the service available to the public 24/7.

"Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is respected throughout the world for its medical excellence and state-of-the-art services," said Paul Spiegelman, chief executive officer of the Beryl Companies. "We are thrilled about the opportunity to complement those services with a host of new communication capabilities that enhance customer contact and take online customer service to a whole new level."

Cedar-Sinai Medical Center, one of the largest and finest private nonprofit hospitals in the western United States, is internationally renowned for its diagnostic and treatment capabilities and its broad spectrum of programs and services, as well as breakthrough biomedical research and superlative medical education.

For the fifth consecutive, two-year period, the medical center has been named Southern California's "gold standard" in health care in an independent survey conducted by the National Research Corp., naming it as the Los Angeles area's consumer choice for having: Best Doctors, Best Nurses, Best Image & Reputation, and Best Overall Quality.

U.S. News and World Report's "Annual Guide to America's Best Hospitals" named Cedars-Sinai as the top-ranked Southern California hospital for heart care and second for gynecology and digestive disorders.

The Beryl Companies is the nation's premier healthcare-exclusive Customer Interaction Center. Since its founding in 1985, Beryl has served more than 500 healthcare-related organizations across the country including hospitals, managed care organizations, medical groups, integrated delivery systems, dot-com companies and pharmaceutical companies.

From its 50,000 square-foot operations center in Dallas, Beryl provides these companies an expanding portfolio of services including outsourced call-center services, clinical nurse triage and Web site development. The company's Web site is www.beryl.net.