The practice case study
- 1. CASE STUDY / HEALTHCARE SECTOR / THE PRACTICE “Of all the many benefits we’ve seen, the overarching one is the Contracted by the NHS, The Practice runs a fast-expanding scalability and ease of community-based healthcare service, delivering clinical services growth that InTechnology to GPs, Primary Care Trusts and other healthcare commissioners. It operates 60 surgeries and walk-in centres nationwide as well as has given and continues numerous specialist clinics and has over 180,000 patients. When to give us. Without that it needed a scalable infrastructure to support its strategy for rapid scalability, we’d have no growth it chose InTechnology. growth. Howard Gooder, CHALLENGES / Commercial Director, The Practice Commitment to the highest standards in clinical care lies at the heart of The Practice’s strategy. In 2008, when it still had only a handful of surgeries, it already knew that a key criterion for its planned growth was to find a proactive IT partner that would allow it to concentrate on bringing clinical services out of hospital in order to treat patients closer to home. The Practice wanted GPs, surgery staff and the business team to be able to spend their time delivering an efficient service, not having their primary focus clouded by having to manage a fully fledged IT department. So a technically solid, well-proven hosted solution with fast support services was imperative. Howard Gooder, Commercial Director at The Practice, says, “We wanted a hosted solution that was efficient, robust and reliable. The last thing we need is the telephone system to go down first thing on a Monday morning just when patients who’ve been holding out over the weekend start calling.” In choosing a technology partner, the three key criteria for The Practice were: • Experience in working with the healthcare sector within the NHS environment, integrating with N3, the national network for the NHS. • Ability to converge voice and data communications onto a single pipe for The Practice’s surgeries and walk-in centres. • A truly scalable solution that would provide a flexible resilient infrastructure and support The Practice’s aggressive strategy for growth.
- 2. HOW INTECHNOLOGY BENEFITS / HELPED / Having considered several potential Howard Gooder says, “Of all the many providers, and impressed by both its benefits we’ve seen, the overarching one healthcare experience and the proven is the scalability and ease of growth that reliability and scalability of its services, InTechnology has given and continues to The Practice chose InTechnology. As The give us. With no scale there’s no growth.” Practice has expanded, rapidly taking on new surgeries and walk-in centres, its Other benefits to The Practice include: partnership with InTechnology has grown with it and it now benefits from a wide range Enhanced service to patients. Although of InTechnology’s services: implemented for reasons of compliance and best practice, the centralised • A secure network that allows voice and operation of Unity Call Recording has data to be converged onto the same pipe brought signicant benefits enabling and that provides separate secure links to network-based activity that simply Fast, streamlined communication. the NHS’s N3 network. couldn’t be done with a traditional telephone InTechnology’s high-availability network, • Broadband Internet access. system. Howard Gooder says, “The carrying both voice and data, together with InTechnology development team were its Unified Communications service enables • Hosted data management services and extremely supportive in helping us create rapid communication between locations and hosted data backup for all its surgeries useful reports from the call recording has helped improve patient management from InTechnology’s data centres. system such as how many patients were and care. hanging up without having their calls • A range of Unified Communications answered.” As a result of the information services including IP telephony (VoIP) gleaned, The Practice has taken remedial Easy partnership. Howard Gooder services, Hosted Exchange for its email action, rerouting calls to a Patient Contact says, “What I’ve particularly liked is that and Microsoft Office Communications Centre which answers as the appropriate InTechnology shares our view of this as a Server (OCS). surgery and books patients’ appointments. ‘partnership’. I can speak to everyone in the company – a named account manager, In 2011, it rolled out Unity Call Recording Business efficiencies. With InTechnology technical engineers, even the Board and the across all its 60 surgeries and walk- handling most of the back-end IT CEO.” in centres, to provide server-side call operations, The Practice can concentrate recording of over 1000 calls a day. on business development and customer FUTURE / service, not managing its IT – its desktop support, team consists of just two people The Practice sees it as important that the supporting 60 locations. relationship with InTechnology continues to flourish. Howard Gooder says, “This has INTECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS / Cost savings. In addition to freeing up time, been a success story on both sides - we’ve there are also significant cost savings and been able to make suggestions about the Managed network services Howard Gooder says, “As the number of services, and InTechnology’s expertise NHS N3 integration surgeries began to grow, economies of scale and support has helped us grow the Broadband Internet access also came into play – as we had known and business. We definitely look forward to this planned for.” continuing.” Hosted data management and backup services Unified Communications • Hosted IP Telephony (Unity) • Unity Call Recording • Hosted Exchange “Unity Call Recording is just the latest service • Hosted Office Communications Server (OCS) that we’ve taken from InTechnology to improve our efficiency and the level of care we can give our patients.” Howard Gooder , Commercial Director, The Practice To learn more about how we could help you, call 0800 983 2522 or email contact@intechnology.com CS/110817