3,500 lines, 3 hospitals, one voice solution
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust provides acute health
services for residents in Kent and parts of northeast Sussex. The
Trust was looking for a single supplier to manage its entire voice
requirements, to provide cost effective communication between its
three hospitals and to deliver the round-the-clock resilience that
is compulsory when dealing with life-critical calls. They
chose Telewest Business.
One of England's 247 NHS trusts, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells
was formed in 2000 to take over the services previously managed by
Kent and Sussex Weald NHS Trust and the Mid Kent Healthcare NHS
Trust. Telewest's history with the Trust goes back to 1997 with the
provision of a managed network service for Mid Kent Healthcare who
at that time also provided community services operating from
Clinics and GP surgeries. Mr Bill Snow, Deputy Director Estates
& Facilities at the Trust explains, “At the time it was really
a leap of faith entrusting a hospital's network to an outside
supplier. Of course, we were worried about resilience and network
reach but we believed it was the way forward, to have a single
accountable provider and a single solution.”
"Centrex was the obvious starting point"
The Telewest Centrex solution was installed in three Maidstone
Hospitals and six associated community clinics. Three years later,
the newly formed Trust again turned to Telewest to provide a fully
managed telephone system to link all of its hospitals; Maidstone,
Kent & Sussex and Pembury.
“From the original tender we hoped that Telewest would build on
its existing solution to meet the future needs of the Trust,” says
Bill. “Centrex was the obvious starting point as we had
districtwide connections in Maidstone.
We also used Eurobell services at some of our other sites. In
any case, we did not have the physical space or initial capital to
host our own system.”
In addition to Centrex's flexibility to respond to the Trust
requirements and its availability at some of the sites, another
factor in Telewest's favour was the cost effectiveness of the
solution. With Centrex the Trust would enjoy free calls between
hospitals and other healthcare sites on the network. The solution
also falls within government guidelines to procure NHS voice
services more competitively.
“The bulk of our communication is within the primary and
secondary healthcare communities. By using entrex, we no
longer had to pay for internal calls between sites and could make
considerable savings,” says Bill. Connecting the three hospitals
was a hugely complex undertaking for the Telewest team. Kent &
Sussex and Pembury hospitals' legacy switch technology had reached
the end of its life cycle and a full audit, from inspecting
existing voice lines and wiring to classifying ageing internal
cabling, was necessary before work could begin.
“The solution looked good on paper and it worked in practice”
Bill Snow, Deputy Director Estates & Facilities A SDH
(Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) ring network was built for the
project.
The logistics of planning and installing the network involved
liaising closely with councils, the Trust and other
contractors.
The ring network itself comprises of 'self-healing' resilient
fibre. If there is a break in the network, calls are routed in the
other direction, guaranteeing no loss of communication, a crucial
requirement in the acute care sector. With Centrex, communication
continuity is also preserved through Disaster Recovery routing -
should a serious incident occur at a hospital its incoming calls
can be redirected to other sites.
“We have had a number of lively exchanges on the topic of
resilience which we've managed to work through. One issue was to
ensure that our return traffic followed a new conduit, completely
separate from our inward traffic. In response, Telewest installed a
number of new cable routes.” Bill adds, “The solution looked
good on paper and it worked in practice.”
To meet statutory requirements, Telewest installed a login
feature that registers every call received by the Trust - crucial
when dealing with the hospital's large number of emergency and
life-critical calls.
From the project's start date in November to its completion five
months later, over 2,000 new Centrex lines were installed bringing
the total number of lines within the Trust to nearly 3,500. The
project is one of the largest of its kind in the acute health arena
and was implemented successfully with no disruptions to the
day-to-day running of the hospitals.
“We've been happy with the installation of the project and we
have a very good relationship with Telewest.” Bill concludes,
“Working with a team that understands the underlying issues,
requirements and goals for our hospitals and has been responsive to
these drivers has been of paramount importance.”
Do you know?
Mid Kent Healthcare NHS Trust was one of the first Acute NHS
Trusts to use an external supplier, Telewest Business, to deliver a
cost effective, revenue based, managed voice service in an
expanding, multi site environment providing critical Primary and
Secondary health services over a wide geographical area. The key
issues for the Trust were:
- Addressing the financial implications of replacing and
expanding a telephony system that had reached maximum capacity
- Providing a corporate focus for a diverse range of services
through a single point of access for voice communication across a
large number of sites with a wide geographical spread
- Achieving a significant reduction in the revenue cost of voice
services