Smart, On-Demand Healthcare Comes to ProMedica With Avaya Networking

Fast-Growing Not-for-Profit Healthcare Organization Rolls Out Always-On IT Network to Power Several Urgent-Care Clinics


SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - April 21, 2016) - Today's on-demand economy continues to revolutionize every sector, including healthcare, where thousands of full-service urgent care centers have sprung up in the U.S. -- including several from ProMedica. To support the healthcare organization's growth and demands from today's consumers, the not-for-profit is using Avaya Networking technology to connect its hospitals and full-service urgent-care centers located throughout Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan.

Prior to its network upgrade, ProMedica faced a number of challenges including the increase in network-dependent needs such as urgent-care sites, electronic health records and multicast applications. In addition, today's patient monitors and devices demand IP multicast capabilities that traditional networks are not equipped to handle. Finally, ProMedica's network engineers were challenged to perform maintenance while maintaining a fully operational network.

Avaya Fabric Connect created significant value for ProMedica while solving various challenges and opening doors for new opportunities:

  • Improved patient service and safety, with the ability to use a single network to efficiently support multiple, bandwidth-intensive applications, such as the public address system, tracking vital signs on bedside monitors, video surveillance, EHR and more.
  • Higher productivity and improved service in the contact center, where real-time dashboards now run flawlessly.
  • Rapid recovery when the company experienced a fiber cut -- requiring six hours to repair -- traffic routed automatically without users ever noticing.
  • Cost savings with the ability to connect two data centers, Fabric Connect saved the organization from buying eight more links -- saving $18,000 to $20,000 monthly.
  • Faster configuration and time to service as the organization integrates newly acquired sites in under a week.

Read the case study: Smart Healthcare -- the remedy for better patient care at ProMedica

With this network infrastructure, the network team has peace of mind that it can easily accommodate the hospital's future demands while providing excellent patient care today.

Quotes:

"When we first investigated Avaya Fabric Connect, we thought it sounded too good to be true. There wasn't any of the traditional complexity, but it promised to deliver all the resiliency we needed. Crucially, the way that it handles multicast was very exciting because we knew that we needed to do something different; business as usual was not an option for ProMedica."
Bruce Meyer, Technical Coordinator of Network Engineering at ProMedica

"As we were tasked with evaluating the value of our other network provider and Avaya, we found speed to delivery and cost more favorable with Avaya, making the decision clear that Avaya is the right way to go for all our networking needs."
Ben Vickers, Director of IT at ProMedica

Tags: Avaya, ProMedica, networking, healthcare, business communications, contact center, patient safety, patient care, technology

About ProMedica

ProMedica is a mission-based, not-for-profit healthcare organization serving northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. The 13-hospital system has more than 16,000 employees, 2,300 physicians with privileges, and more than 800 healthcare providers employed by ProMedica Physicians. Additionally it offers a health plan, Paramount, which serves 320,000 members including more than 225,000 members in the statewide Medicaid plan. Driven by its Mission to improve your health and well-being, ProMedica offers a full range of diagnostic, medical and surgical specialties in areas such as emergency medicine and trauma, behavioral health, heart and vascular, oncology, orthopaedics, neurology, and women's and children's services. The health system has been nationally recognized for its advocacy programs and efforts to raise awareness about hunger as a health issue.

About Avaya

Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premises and cloud deployment options that seamlessly integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. The Avaya fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.

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Smart, On-Demand Healthcare Comes to ProMedica with Avaya Networking