Case Study: Hospital Heals Patient Care With Optimum Lightpath FTTB
The health care sector is impacted by diminished reimbursements, increasing patient demands, and fierce competition among hospitals. Hospitals stay top of mind in the community and attract customers from competing facilities by offering new treatments and new technologies. And with new technology comes a need for more bandwidth. With more than 700,000 annual patient visits and an increased demand for services, Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey, was ready to upgrade its computerized systems.
Challenge:
As patient care needs increased, critical data and image-sharing became a top priority for Holy Name Hospital to guard against patient waits and delays for diagnoses. Holy Name had many communications carriers providing different services, making it difficult to identify which carrier managed which line. With the constant need to add bandwidth to scale to growth, cost became an issue. When Holy Name’s Information Technology team witnessed a massive outage caused by a storm in Rochelle Park, N.J., a few years ago, the case for diversifying communications providers to guarantee always-on operations was made.
Holy Name switched a majority of its communications services to Optimum Lightpath to avoid further outages, boost speed and increase reliability, bringing two dedicated fiber lines into its facilities from different streets for redundancy. Holy Name selected Optimum Lightpath for its highly reliable, fully redundant, self-healing Ethernet network and its high-availability, high-capacity voice/Internet bundle to power mission-critical applications and services for the hospital.
“Because of that storm, businesses’ phones were down for at least 24 hours and there was nothing they could do. We needed to make sure that never happened to us – we cannot live without phone or Internet services, so we switched to Optimum Lightpath,” said Mike Skvarenina, assistant vice president of Information Systems at Holy Name Hospital. “In a competitive environment like this, where patients demand and deserve the fastest, most advanced service, physicians need access to reports and images in seconds, not minutes. Speed is life and diversity is key.”
Solution:
Holy Name Hospital increased its bandwidth from a 3MB Internet connection to 100MB with Optimum Lightpath, adding much more capacity, speed and reliability for much less than it would cost for similar services with another carrier. “When I learned about Optimum Lightpath, it seemed like it offered the best of many worlds. First and foremost was the size of the (Internet) pipe (100MB) with the concept of peeling off just the bandwidth necessary for telecommunications services; next was the ‘fixed’ monthly cost and large allotment of minutes, and finally the idea of a ‘self-healing’ network – these all sounded very appealing.”
“Now we pay just one price, enjoy a very large Internet pipe (compared to what we had) and we have the peace of mind that the chances of losing phone service to the outside world have been reduced, not only due to the self-healing network but also because we have two paths from different streets coming into the building for added redundancy,” said Skvarenina.
With Optimum Lightpath, Holy Name Hospital’s Internet experience and instant access to important data is much faster. “We use the Internet to connect our satellite offices to our network, and we have many clinicians accessing our systems from their homes and offices. We are also constantly exchanging data with third-party health care partners and our radiologists (who are the biggest users of bandwidth due to the size of the images) are set up to read test results from their homes.”
Holy Name Hospital leverages Optimum Lightpath to power reliable phone service and instant access to its online clinical information system, enabling physicians and other caregivers to gain access to test results, CT/nuclear and PET scan images and patient histories in just seconds – remotely from the home, in the office, at the patient bed side or in the emergency department.
Holy Name’s private physician practices can now access its WebHIS clinical information system from anywhere to review test results, view radiology images, and follow the care of their patients. The hospital is also able to communicate real-time ER registrations to the County for pandemic detection surveillance and validate patients’ insurance coverage during the registration process, all through the Internet.
Results & Benefits:
Holy Name Hospital significantly increased its quality, reliability and speed of communications with patients and its community, and saved $50,000 a year by working with Optimum Lightpath.
Holy Name’s fully computerized environment is now optimized, consolidating all voice, data, Internet and imaging communications over Optimum Lightpath’s 100 percent fiber Metro Ethernet network. “Speed is so critical for us – speed is life, for radiologists and for patients. Making diagnoses more quickly, whether from home or in the hospital, can impact patients’ lives, particularly if it’s emergency care. The speed of Optimum Lightpath’s service has made a significant improvement in our ability to deliver better patient care,” said Dr. Jacqueline Brunetti, Medical Director of Radiology at Holy Name Hospital.
“With Optimum Lightpath, we managed to increase our bandwidth, simplify billing, assure compliance and inherit a very personable team that understands our business – all this and we still saved approximately $50,000 last year,” said Bob Baragona, assistant vice president for Finance at Holy Name Hospital.
At hospitals, health care is always on – and speed is life. Holy Name Hospital has changed the way they work at the patient bedside, in radiology, at the pharmacy and in the emergency department. Using communications technology to help diagnose patients faster to improve outcomes and save lives.
