The background

South West Communications Group provides City & Hackney NHS Primary Care Trust (PCT) with a truly flexible and scalable telephone system that could be integrated into its existing network.

City & Hackney PCT, based in London’s East End, was formed in 2001 to provide a wide variety of care to its population of 250,000 through its 56 GP practices, 20 health centres, dental surgeries, opticians, pharmacists and other health advisory services including NHS Direct.

The challenge

City & Hackney PCT decided to review their communications strategy in 2003 as they became aware that change was needed, not least because their existing Centrex solution was proving very expensive and, in some instances, actually inhibited the provision of extensions to employees with 3 or 4 people sharing the same extension because the Trust could not justify the cost.

Finding the right solution was further complicated by the age of some of their existing buildings and also the future plans for various properties within the Trust’s estate. Some of the wiring in the Trust’s 70-plus locations was reaching the end of its life, while in other areas, there was modern network cabling. The Trust could not feasibly update all the wiring as some of the buildings were due to be refurbished or rebuilt resulting in a wasted investment. City & Hackney PCT needed to utilise the parts of the old communication network where there was no business case for modernisation while also providing access to modern, cost-effective network technology that would be readily adaptable for the integrated health service of the future.

The solution

Following a formal tender process, South West Communications Group was awarded the contract to provide a new telecommunications system to the Trust using Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise technology.

This system has since been rolled out to encompass additional sites after cost savings of £150,000 were realised in the first year alone. The overall solution now provides the Trust with the following:

• Centralised operators
• Centralised reporting and management
• Voicemail with email integration
• Converged network supporting voice, data and video
• Migration to IP telephony
• Unified communications
• Contact centre application
• DECT cordless telephony
• GSM mobile phones integration
• Fax to the desktop PC
• Duplicate call server for resilience
• Free calls between sites

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