Self Regional Healthcare Uses VoIP to Cure Communication Ills

Advocate Networks Lends Expertise for Major Upgrade

Many things in life improve with age, but old PBXs aren't one of them.

"Our Rolm system was 20 years old and no longer supported by the vendor," says Chuck McDevitt, Director of Information Technology for Self Regional Healthcare in Greenwood, S.C. "We were concerned about reliability and the potential for increased risk. You don't want to worry about not being able to reach someone in a clinical environment."

But completely updating the healthcare center's telecommunications system would require a considerable outlay of scarce capital resources. To help articulate the business case for this complex investment, McDevitt asked Advocate Networks to work with Self's staff to identify requirements and how they could be addressed through implementation of a new, VoIP-based infrastructure.

Building the Business Case Through Risk Management

As an initial step, Strategy and Planning Practice Leader Bob Landstrom conducted a discovery study to gain a complete understanding of the center's current technical capabilities and potential future requirements. He then condensed his findings and recommendations into a brief report and presentation for the hospital's management team.

"Bob was able to articulate the business case for the investment from a risk-management perspective," McDevitt says. "His analysis helped us secure the funding for the new system."

Selecting the Best Proposal

"Kris Peters (Director, Clinical Technology Services) and I attended VoiceCon, and it helped us narrow down our choices to four or five technology suppliers," McDevitt says. "Even so, we wanted to continue working with Advocate Networks. They had a formulized methodology for working through this type of process."

As a follow on to the discovery phase, McDevitt asked Strategic Convergence Practice Leader Wayne Webb and Consultant David Watkins to assist the organization with turning its needs assessment into a practical upgrade strategy.

Webb and Watkins used their VoIP expertise to help develop a request for proposals (RFP), qualify potential vendors, and assess submissions. The methodology added sophistication to the process by enabling McDevitt's team to weight specific elements from each proposal.

"It was fascinating to see how the rankings changed when more weight was given to different qualities, such as experience or support capability," McDevitt says. "It let us look at the proposals in a different way from anything I experienced before."

Narrowing the List

The methodology has helped the team narrow the submissions to two potential service providers. Advocate Networks is continuing to assist with the selection process by accompanying the Self team on site visits.

"We've been impressed with the experience that Wayne and David have brought to the project," Peters says. "Even the vendors they've been evaluating say they are a pleasure to work with."

After the final award is made, Self will conduct a one-year pilot study to evaluate the technology solution in detail. In year two of the project, the solution will be implemented in a hybrid-integration with the existing Rolm system. Over the last year of the project, the VoIP platform will be rolled out center-wide and the legacy system will be retired.

McDevitt notes that the move to VoIP represents a paradigm shift for Self's IT and Telecom departments, but it holds the promise of establishing an infrastructure that will be much more robust and survivable than the antiqued technology it is replacing. Making that transition has been a challenge, but one made much easier by the experts from Advocate Networks.