An Appia Case Study

Sturgis Hospital is a municipally-owned, non-profit, 84-bed hospital in Sturgis, Michigan, with eight offsite locations. The hospital generates more than $53 million in annual revenues and employs more than 400 associates.

Business Challenge

Sturgis Hospital was in the beginning stages of a major addition to its main campus, including a new birthing center and an expansion of its surgery facilities. The hospital was using an outdated legacy PBX that was struggling to handle the growing incoming call load. Each of the hospital’s eight offsite locations had its own phone service through a self-contained PBX. With the phone system close to capacity, customers were often getting busy signals. While working on a master facility plan, it became clear to hospital administrators that the existing PBX system would not have the capacity nor the features needed to accommodate additional users.

Sturgis Hospital needed a phone system that could handle a sizeable increase in incoming traffic while providing the scalability needed for future expansion and the planned integration of the hospital’s remote sites. The hospital’s IT staff also wanted a hosted voice solution that would enable conferencing and other features, and would be compatible with an upcoming wireless infrastructure and nurse call system.

The Appia Solution

Appia worked with the hospital to design a hosted IP voice system that would meet the requirements of its growing staff and facilities. Appia engineers then deployed two Cisco CallManager servers and a complete Cisco network infrastructure that included Cisco IP phones and voicemail. Multiple PRIs and T1s were connected to Appia’s network for local and long-distance calling. Multiple paths to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) were incorporated to create redundant calling paths.

Appia’s engineering staff worked closely with Sturgis Hospital to schedule the deployment of the services in order to avoid interruption of hospital communications. Timelines and porting of numbers were coordinated by Appia and the hospital’s telecom service provider.

The Results

Soon after the system was installed, Sturgis Hospital recognized an impact on its telecom expenses. “We’ve definitely seen a savings in our monthly phone charges,” said Rita Denison, HIS/Telecom Manager at Sturgis Hospital. “In the long term, we’ve also reduced network maintenance costs by having only one network as opposed to two.”

As a part of its hosted voice service, Appia conducts regular offsite backups of the hospital’s CallManager and Unity servers. This service has provided the hospital with an effective voice disaster-recovery solution. In the event of a network outage due to a natural or other disaster, calls would be automatically rerouted to an alternate location while the voice system and CallManager environment are restored.

“The main reason we went with Appia was to have things like system backup and disaster recovery taken care of for us,” continued Denison. “It’s good to know that we can rely on Appia to handle these important functions for us.”

The administration and maintenance of the hospital’s voice system is also easier with the new system, especially when adding or relocating offices. “When we need to move an employee to a new office or temporarily relocate someone for a special project or circumstance, their number travels with them,” says Denison. ”This saves a lot of time by eliminating the need to change an extension number or rewire the extension to accommodate the move.”

The enterprise-class features of the Appia solution have also increased employee efficiency, according to Denison. “Features like call history, voicemail forwarding, call park, and conferencing have really made a difference in how we operate,” she adds. “To have everything at your fingertips is quite a luxury. It’s definitely an internal improvement in our voice services that everybody using the phones can benefit from.”