Testimonial – Healthcare
Success Stories
Testimonials - Healthcare
Bath Community Hospital
Bath hospital can trace its origins back over 100 years to the vision of Gladys Ingalls Robertson who saw the need for better healthcare in the Hot Springs Valley. Through her efforts the nation’s first rural visiting nurse program was established in 1913.
To handle the needs of the nursing program a Community House was established that became the headquarters for the visiting nurses. Eventually the Community House became a hospital and later became Bath Community Hospital.
Today the hospital continues Lady Robertson’s commitment to caring for the community and strives to be a top quality, critical access hospital. Bath Hospital has now gone beyond the her vision and has built resources and partnerships which provide a full range of hospital and outpatient services.
Solution
Decision
We received solution bids from E-MetroTel, Avaya, and Cisco. In the end we decided on E-MetroTel for several reasons: First – The E-MetroTel solution was less expensive than the other two solutions. Second – E-MetroTel allowed us to keep our digital telephones and migrate to IP telephones at our own pace. Third – The downtime for replacing the Option 11 with the Avaya solution required that the hospital be down without phone service for 8 hrs. “Tom Freeman proposed that he could do the replacement with the UCX solution with less than 10 minutes of downtime. And in fact in the end we moved from the Option 11 to the UCX in 8 minutes!”
Operation
We currently use a UCX450 powering 380 extensions that are combination of legacy Nortel digital telephones and IP telephones that we are migrating to. We use the phone system in a mostly traditional manner: Our main phone numbers are answered by the auto attendant, our clinics use auto attendant, and our outlying clinics answer calls directly with a live operator. And after 4 years of operation (as of August 2020) we can happily report that the system works very well and has been very reliable.
Benefits
- Cost Savings – We were able to remove 2 PRI’s and discontinue our long distance service after moving to SIP trunking. This saves us over $2000 per month!
- Adding and Moving Telephones – Changing or adding telephones is extremely easy with UCX. We just log into the utility and click a drop down list and change the phone type and it’s done. This is a great time saver for us.
- Migration to IP – Being able to migrate on our own schedule has been fantastic. This saved us substantial money on the initial install and allows us to budget as necesary for ongoing migrations to IP telephones.
Recommendation
E-MetroTel’s UCX solution has been extremely reliable and has been a substantial cost saver for our hospital. Over the last 4 years our satisfaction with the solution has grown even more and we can recommend the solution for other healthcare facilities.
Tracy Bartley - IT Director
Bath Community Hospital
Jackson Hospital
Jackson Hospital was established in 1939 as a 100 bed community medical facility. The hospital is located in in the pristine Northwest Florida town of Marianna where the opportunity to make a difference still exists.
The facility operates with 425 care professionals that complement the 30+ active medical staff who live and practice in Marianna. Together the physicians and staff combine their clinical expertise with the latest medical information and information technologies to provide exceptional care to every patient.
Solution
When the decision was made to replace our old 4 cabinet Nortel Option 11 we had some specific criteria for the new system which were: reliability, simplicity, and low cost of ownership. Initially, we looked at and were quoted a ShoreTel / Mitel solution by our original carrier.
We were introduced to the E-MetroTel solution by A1 Teletronics (Ghekko Communications) and were very happy with the migration capability of the UCX solution. The ability to replace the Nortel PBX but still retain our telephones was huge for us. Further research into the capabilities of the system (ie Remote IP based phones) allowed us to leverage our already robust networking infrastructure and convert the mini-carrier remote location to IP based, thus saving the cost of the dedicated T1.
With us being a Not-for-Profit hospital, the budget can be very tight, and even with the numerous benefits, which includes integrated voicemail and no voicemail seat licensing, the E-MetroTel system came in at 1/3 of the price of ShoreTel / Mitel, the closest competitor. Additionally the system caused the least disruption because almost no one needed re-training with the new system. And we were able to realize additional savings by the ability to use SIP trunks which allowed us to drop our more expensive PRI service.
Use Case
Since the initial installation we now have 580 extensions and have added 14 remote clinics. Most clinics use an Auto Attendant to route the calls to the appropriate department, thus freeing up the receptionist to attend to patients at the front desk. Our emergency room is able to have calls come in on a single number and have multiple phones ring. So emergency room calls are easily picked-up from any phone.
And we take full advantage of the ease of programming and management as well as the Call Recording feature (automatic or on-demand).
Benefits
- Cost Savings – Retaining original telephones and eliminating the dedicated T1.
- Less Disruption – Low retraining requirements.
- Business Continuity – E-MetroTel’s open standards allowed us to keep our 3rd party wireless DECT phones.
- Streamlining – Emergency room call handling remained streamlined due to each call ringing on multiple phones.
Recommendation
My recommendation to other facilities needing to replace their system is to do it! You won’t regret it.
Jamie Hussey, Director of Information Technology
Jackson Hospital, Marianna, FL
Brethren Village
Brethren Village was founded in 1897 and since it’s humble beginnings on a homestead in north central Lancaster County in Pennsylvania has had a long history of providing quality services and compassionate care for more than 120 years. We have grown from an infirmary to a modern, 24×7 health care facility paired with faith-based living.
With a complete menu of services and amenities along with modern and safe atmosphere Brethren Village is ideal for retirement living. The community has over 1200 residents, 600 employees on 150+ acres of land.
Solution
We found E-MetroTel on several online forums and after contacting them were pleased to find out analog phones and digital phones could be kept without a full hardware replacement; substantially reducing our replacement cost. We also had requirements for professional voicemail with Auto Attendant which E-MetroTel was able to meet.
In the end we chose to migrate with E-MetroTel instead of a complete replacement that would have been required with other systems.
Overnight (literally – migration was done in one night) we went from being a Nortel/Avaya customer to being a E-MetroTel customer. We are currently running a UCX3000 as our main system. We have around 1100 analog ports and over 130 digital ports for a total of 1230 extensions on the system. We also have two UCX250 servers that we are using as gateways for our PRI Service.
Use Case
We basically function as a mini carrier for our residents. They bring their own phones that they are familiar with and we provide the analog ports through the UCX. Dial tone service is provided via numerous DID numbers from our PRI’s. And we can even port a new resident’s phone number over to our system. During typical business hours our calls are answered by an attendant. Overnight and off-hours calls are answered with a multi-level auto attendant. Our employees use the digital devices that we retained from our Nortel system along with an interface for our ASCOM clinical handsets for mobility.
The system has performed well for over 2 years (since 2018). We are planning to implement a second UCX3000 for redundancy, and we are planning at some point to make the switch from PRI dial tone to SIP.
Benefits
- Cost Savings – By retaining our analog and digital devices we saved a lot of the cost associated with user devices.
- No retraining costs – Because the UCX has a similar feature set to the Nortel system little retraining was needed.
- Future proofing – UCX has many features and applications that we can use in the future like SIP, mobility, conferencing.
Recommendation
One of the things that sold us was that we felt that we had E-MetroTel’s ear. To some of the other bigger shops you are just a number. We felt that we could get new features added if necessary. I would recommend the system. We have in fact told other people to look into E-MetroTel and want them to succeed.
Aaron Ruppert - Technology Manager
Brethren Village
Advent Health - Florida Hospital Orlando
With 9 major hospital campuses, over 20 urgent care centers and 100+ physician offices in the state of Florida, Florida Hospital’s communication network is large and complex. When it was time to replace some of our end of life telephone systems, we tried other solutions but were disappointed with the fewer phone features and cost of the systems.
By deploying the E-MetroTel UCx solution, we have been able to keep the many different models of telephones we have throughout the enterprise and have obtained additional features that are already loaded within the UCx application. We are deploying more and more UCx systems throughout our enterprise and we have been very impressed with how smooth the transition has been (which has been seamless to our customers), and have found it to be the most cost- effective option. We are extremely satisfied with the UCx solution.
L. Taylor, Telecom Manager
Florida Hospital
Almonte General Hospital Fairview Manor
We turned to E-MetroTel to develop a solution to automate our hospital’s existing notification process and help us better manage our resources across the entire organization. We were more than delighted with Code Orange, not only from seeing our call-out process metrics drop from hours down to just minutes, but also with the ease of deployment and ability to report performance metrics by department or individual, making it much easier to manage our resources.
Brian Burns, Vice-President and CFO
Almonte General Hospital
Lincoln Community Midwives
Lincoln Community Midwives was “born” October 1, 2012 as a sister practice to Niagara Midwifery Practice, which was the first practice in the Niagara Region giving families a choice between home birth and hospital.
Having reliable phone service is critical to us and to our clients. Unfortunately our hosted service was regularly dropping phone calls creating unnecessary stress to our staff as well as the families in our community that depend on us to prepare them for the arrival of their newborn.
We turned to Sideline Telephone Service who implemented an excellent phone system for us from E-MetroTel. The UCx was able to support the cisco phones that we had already purchased from our previous hosted provider, and we could choose from a variety of phones to meet the needs of our administrator. We chose a Yealink phone which works very well with the automated attendant features of the UCx. Sideline completed the installation flawlessly and are always available to provide support when needed.
We are very happy with our UCx phone system and our customers are no longer experiencing call disruption.
