Enabling a health community vision

Hounslow Primary Care Trust (PCT) is responsible for supporting and improving the health of people in Chiswick, Isleworth, Brentford, Hounslow and Feltham.

Inheriting a voice and data network that required some investment, the PCT needed a modern telecoms solution that was cost effective, practical and delivered better connectivity between hospitals, surgeries, clinics, health centres, social services and the public.

In 2002, and for the first time in the history of the NHS, health care resources passed directly from Whitehall to the newly formed PCTs at the NHS front line. Today, around 300 PCTs control health care locally and aim to deliver a high quality service designed around the patient that is fast, modern and convenient. Hounslow PCT has a budget of around £200 million per year to provide a range of primary and community health services including: health visiting, district nursing, therapy and learning disability services together with the commissioning of hospital services from other organisations across London. With the shift in power, responsibility and accountability from central government to the front line, the onus is on PCTs to maximise their resources, including their communication infrastructure, to deliver the very best patient health care possible.

From the onset, it was apparent to Graeme Hollocks, Head of IT for Hounslow PCT, that investment in communications was necessary, "When we became a PCT in 2002, we inherited a mix of voice and data services which needed upgrading. Not only did we need to rationalise what we did have, but further investment was required to create a modern, robust telecoms infrastructure for the long term."

Hounslow PCT turned to Telewest Business to provide technical solutions that would meet their stringent budgets and timescales and which would enable them to develop their vision of a health community.

"It was a natural progression to use Telewest Business for our voice requirements. We already used Centrex in some of our sites and wanted the same benefits, level of service and features across the board."

With a number of the PCT's PABXs (Private Automatic Branch Exchanges) coming to the end of their useful life cycle, Telewest's Centrex was the ideal, future-proof solution. With no PABX system to buy, manage, maintain or upgrade, possible cost savings are considerable. As a managed platform hosted on Telewest's own exchanges, Centrex creates no demands on the PCT's own resources and personnel. The fluidity of the solution, where lines can be readily added or removed, is key where telephony must span across a range of NHS sites and meet the flux of employee and department activity. Centrex creates a real sense of a health care community with clinicians dialling just four digits to reach Trust sites and with calls between sites being free of charge. "With Centrex, we wanted users to benefit from a range of practical features such as voicemail, call forward and call diversion and we needed it to be cost effective" says Graeme Hollocks.

Telewest Business has also deployed a new online directory package, Community eDirectory, which allows staff at any of the sites to quickly check phone and location details for anyone in the PCT.

Working in tandem with the Centrex voice solution, the PCT selected Telewest's managed Virtual Private Network (VPN) to create a Wide Area Network (WAN) for data transfer. The key driver for e-delivery in the NHS - is the National Programme for IT. Part of this initiative includes the introduction of the NHS Care Records Service (NCRS) which will eventually provide clinicians with access to patient records in surgeries or hospitals across the country.

"Accessing patient records across the country will be feasible in the long-term but at the moment there is not the infrastructure in place to transfer records nationally. At Hounslow PCT however, we are rolling-out an interim network so our patient records will be made available to clinicians locally. The Telewest WAN solution will enable this," explains Graeme Hollocks.

Hounslow PCT is also involved in a number of Local Improvement and Finance Trust (LIFT) projects which provide the investment to modernise GPs' surgeries and health clinics. In fact, work starts in 2004 on a brand new health centre in Hounslow.

When complete, this will be the biggest primary care centre in the country and will provide state-of-the-art health, social care and community services under one roof. In the future, this mix of private and public investment will mean that 68 of all Hounslow GPs will be practising out of brand new facilities by 2007.

This level of investment requires a responsive telecoms supplier to keep pace with the PCT's modernisation programme. "As part of the LIFT project we are building a new centre for 150 staff. That means new telephone numbers," explains Graeme. "In 2004 we'll be looking at Telewest Business to provide us with a completely new range of Direct Dial Inward (DDI) numbers for the PCT to cope with future capacity."

In the meantime the roll-out of data and network solutions to GP surgeries in the borough continues. "Using one supplier and having one point of contact via our account manager has made the whole process simpler for us. With Telewest Business, we can be sure of compatibility across our sites with no conflict between systems."