An Appia Case Study

Sturgis Hospital is a municipally-owned, non-profit, 84-bed hospital with eight offsite locations, located in Sturgis, MI. 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The Hospital was using an outdated legacy PBX that was struggling to handle a
growing incoming call capacity. Each of the Hospital’s eight off-site locations had
its own phone service through a self-contained PBX. With the phone system
close to capacity, customers were often getting busy signals when calling in.
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 Hospital staff to design a hosted IP voice system that would
meet the requirements of their growing staff and facilities. Appia engineers then
deployed two Cisco Call Manager 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 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 Call Manager 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
re-routed to an alternate location while the voice system and Call Manager
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 has also
gotten 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 re-wire 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.”