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With Hurricane Frances bearing down on its southern Florida call center and local businesses closing down in preparation for the worst, LifeWatch - a provider of cardiac monitoring services - took steps to ensure that there was no lapse in coverage for its patients with potential cardiac emergencies.
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Beginning on the afternoon of Sept. 2, calls that would have been taken at the Boca Raton, Fla. call center instead were routed to LifeWatch's Buffalo Grove, Ill. location. These changes were implemented a full day before the storm hit in order to ensure that the re-routing of calls was seamless and none would be lost in the shuffle.

"We knew that we couldn't simply close our Boca Raton call center without risking patient health," said Ori Braun, chief operating officer of Lifewatch Inc. "That's why LifeWatch is the only national cardiac monitoring company that utilizes calls centers in independent geographic locations. Our planning and infrastructure make us uniquely qualified to provide continuous service in the event of a power outage, natural disaster or other disruption in facility or employee availability."

The Boca Raton call center usually receives calls from the Eastern portion of the United States - about one-third of the total calls LifeWatch takes each day.

"Automatically routing calls to Buffalo Grove during Hurricane Frances ensured that all patients, regardless of their location, were just a phone call away from LifeWatch technicians in the event of a cardiac emergency," said Braun.

Patients enrolled in LifeWatch service wear devices prescribed by their doctor to monitor their electrocardiogram (ECG). When the patient feels an irregularity - a skipped beat or racing heart - he or she records an ECG on the LifeWatch device.

After recording, the patient can transmit the collected data over a standard telephone connection to the LifeWatch monitoring center, where a trained technician reviews the ECG. Depending upon the findings, the patient's doctor and/or 911 emergency services can be notified with the exact ECG data so that the patient can be correctly treated.

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