The Lundwood Medical Centre is very progressive and dynamic GP practice, with three busy surgeries located in South Yorkshire. The practice is led by Dr Harban, who is not only a well-known and highly respected GP but also a man with an excellent knowledge of IT.
Freedom of choice to get the most benefit
When the local PCT told Lundwood Medical that they had to purchase specific IT equipment Dr Harban knew there was a better way to ‘network’ the sites and to add more value than the equipment he was being persuaded to take.
Dr. Harban believed passionately in providing the best for his practice and pursued his right to implement a better solution than the standard system the PCT suggested, and eventually Dr. Harban won the right to make his own decision.
What’s important to the practice
The practice had three key criteria to satisfy if they were to gain significant benefits from their IT system.
- Performance – To provide the fastest economically viable technology, for the transfer of medical information such as patient records and X-rays, both inside the surgeries and between surgeries.
- Reduced operational costs – To reduce operational cost by adding voice to the network, allowing each practice to communicate with the other free of charge.
- Security – To protect patient confidentially, by ensuring the network was 100% secure.
Voice and data integration
The most expensive parts of any IT network are the circuits that inter-connect the sites, and therefore it’s vital to make the most efficient use of these and to get as much information over them as possible.
Voice over IP – voice and data integration
By using Case Communications ‘Viper’ Voice and Data routers, the practice uses the circuits for both voice and patients’ data, allowing all inter-surgery calls to be free. High levels of voice compression ensure each telephone call uses the minimum bandwidth on the circuit, and when there are no telephone calls at all, the entire circuit is used for transferring patient data. No changes to the existing PBX’s or telephones were required, ensuring the minimum of capital expenditure.
Patients’ out-of-hours calls re-directed without cost
One of the key benefits of the new system is the ability of patients to call their local surgery outside normal hours and have their call re-routed to a surgery which is still open.
Making the use of broadband products
The use of Case Communications XLR 554 45Mbps broadband products, with circuit bonding to allow multiple circuits to be joined into one high speed inter-surgery pipe, ensures the network is high performance, cost effective and totally secure.
An efficient practice serving patients
Dr. Harban has upgraded the practice ‘EMIS’ servers, to performance levels more appropriate to a busy practice. Case Communications upgraded the practice Ethernet switches to provide Gigabit to all the PCs. The result was data transfer ten times quicker than the original system, with the end result that the practice is able to see more patients per day.
Sometimes it’s necessary to stand up for what you believe to be right and Dr Harban’s ability to understand technology and to not simply accept what he was requested to purchase has allowed the Lundwood Medical Centre to become a leading-edge practice.
For more information please contact Case Communications.