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Overview

Like small hospitals throughout North America, Androscoggin Valley Hospital (AVH) balances growing workloads against ever-tighter budgets and limited resources. The 25-bed facility is located in Berlin, N.H., a city of 10,000 at the edge of the White Mountains.

But in many ways, AVH isn’t at all like most small hospitals. Its impressive range of care—from primary healthcare and pediatric services to specialty practices and advanced surgery—places AVH on par with larger facilities. Then there is its strategic approach to communications. In 2010, AVH implemented a new Polycom® KIRK® Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephone (DECT) infrastructure that efficiently alerts the hospital’s nursing staff when a patient needs help. Integrated with the Dalcon Alert system from Dalcon Communications, Inc., the wireless KIRK handsets signal nurses whenever alarms within patient rooms are triggered, advising them where they’re needed and why. The cost-effective solution even reminds them to reposition immobile patients every two hours.

Not only does the system help simplify the job of caring for patients, but it supplies nurses with their own telephones to consult with physicians, respond to pages, or interact with staff in other departments. The KIRK handsets also have streamlined communications throughout the facility by replacing pagers for AVH administrative staff and technicians. As a result, it’s easier than ever for AVH to enhance care by responding quickly to patient needs.

Replacing an Outdated System

The legacy communications system at AVH was long overdue for replacement. “We’d been working with outdated systems that couldn’t be repaired,” recalls Clare Vallee, vice president of nursing at AVH. “Parts of it were over 30 years old.”

The communication infrastructure—a patchwork of nurse call and alarm systems linked to a Mitel PBX—worked, though far from perfectly. “We had huge issues with bed alarms,” says Vallee, referring to the systems integrated with patient beds that emit an audible signal when a weak or infirm patient leaves his bed—or worse, falls from it. “We could hear the alarm from down the hall, but we wouldn’t know which room it was coming from.”

“With the Polycom KIRK and Dalcon Alert system, we now know immediately what problem the patient is having and where the patient is. Responding to alarms is easier now.”

-Brenda Aubin, Director, Medical-Surgical Unit, Androscoggin Valley Hospital

Alarms for chairs and IV pumps had similar problems. “We knew each alarm’s sound, so we knew what the problem was; it just took a while to find the room,” says Brenda Aubin, AVH’s Medical- Surgical Unit director. “Our culture has always been that if you hear an alarm, you just go. So several nurses would respond—not just the nurse assigned to that room. It probably wasn’t the most efficient process.”

Nurses also must reposition some patients at least once every two hours to prevent pressure sores that can lead to infection. But staying on schedule proved a persistent challenge. “Bed turns were self-policed,” says Aubin. “The expectation was for each nurse to keep that responsibility straight. But across multiple shifts and changing routines, it wasn’t easy.”

Putting Alerts in Nurses’ Hands

AVH turned to Dalcon, a Polycom VOIP Field Verified partner. Dalcon proposed a solution that integrates Dalcon Alert, a new solution designed especially for hospitals, with Polycom KIRK handsets. When an alarm is triggered or a patient presses his bedside call button, Dalcon Alert automatically sends nurses a brief text message describing the nature of the alert and the patient’s room number. The system interfaces with AVH’s Mitel PBX via the Dalcon Communications Manager (DCM) server, which generates the messages and distributes them via the KIRK Wireless Server 6000. An overhead monitor located at the nurse’s station also displays alerts and their status. “With the Polycom KIRK and Dalcon Alert system, we now know immediately what problem the patient is having, and where the patient is,” says Aubin. “Responding to alarms is easier now.”

Kirk 4040 with Bed Fall Alert

The budget-friendly solution also keeps track of bed turn schedules by alerting nurses when the bed turn cycle reaches 90 minutes, and again at the two-hour mark. “It’s one less thing nurses have to worry about,” says Vallee.

Nurses use KIRK 4040 handsets. Designed to withstand heavy use without requiring recharges during long hospital shifts, the programmable handsets assign unique rings to each alert, an audible cue that saves nurses time and trouble. By functioning as a wireless telephone, the KIRK handsets also offer nurses some freedom. “Before, if a nurse called a physician, she either had to wait for him to call back, or we’d have to hunt her down when the call came,” says Aubin. “Now she can get the call directly.”

Nurses also use the phones to communicate with other AVH staffers, many of whom carry KIRK 5020 Handsets to replace pagers that lacked KIRK features like speed dialing. “Staff in radiology, our sleep center, and dietary department, along with our house coordinators, all use them,” says Vallee, “and they love them.”

The AVH solution also involved some crucial customization by Polycom. “Polycom’s KIRK team worked closely with us to optimize the handsets for use with the Dalcon Alert platform,” notes Dalcon CEO David Condra. “Those efforts substantially streamlined integration and deployment at AVH.”

Future plans may call for replacing AVH’s end-of-life PBX. Fortunately, the new Dalcon DCM and KIRK handsets would work seamlessly with a Polycom IP-based solution—offering AVH another chance to show just how far even a small hospital’s budget can go.

The NASBA (National Association of State Boards of Accountancy) serves as a forum for the boards of accountancy of 55 states and US Territories.

As primary support provider for these boards across 55 States and US Territories, as well as for thousands of individuals registering for the CPA Examination at any given time, NASBA’s system runs an average of 5,500-plus calls per day.

Need to Integrate Telephones and Information Technology Drives Search for Telephony Solution

Given his organization’s high-volume and highly interactive environment NASBA Chief Technology Officer, Ed Barnicott, made tightening the integration between his telecommunications and IT systems a top priority.

“Our group was challenged to engineer a platform for Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and a robust Integrated Voice Response (IVR) platform,” he says. “Each caller’s account needed to be automatically brought up on our customer service representative’s (CSR) monitor as soon as we received the call.”

Enabling that functionality on the organization’s 10 year-old proprietary phone system was possible, according to Barnicott, but extremely expensive. “It was already costing us an inordinate amount of money just to support and maintain the system, and we would have had to spend significantly more to get the CTI functionality we needed,” he says.

Flexibility, Functionality, Service

NASBA solicited proposals from a number of phone system providers, including its incumbent provider, and received quotes ranging from over $180,000, for upgrading the existing switch, to well over $500,000 for a new, comprehensive phone system.  The Dalcon solution cost was well below even the upgrade option and delivered a customized solution including a complete phone system replacement with full IP telephony.

Though the phone system’s cost was an important consideration, Barnicott placed more emphasis on the flexibility and functionality the system could deliver, as well as its ability to support NASBA’s future growth – anticipated to expand to 600 phones (up from its current 240).

Given NASBA’s technical orientation, Barnicott’s believed his expectations could best be met by a software-based system. After a yearlong evaluation process NASBA selected an Asterisk-based system from Dalcon in October 2008.

According to Barnicott, it was Dalcon’s business model that set it apart.  “Dalcon had an insight into the modern telephony market that I found lacking in the other providers,” he says. “Several of the companies that pitched us were traditional switch companies that had moved to VoIP. They didn’t understand that telephony is a software product, with commodity hardware. Dalcon recognized that the only way to differentiate is through functionality, flexibility and service, and they do a terrific job on that.”

Open Standards: Lower costs, Increased Flexibility

Dalcon’s use of the open standards components throughout its solution is evidence of his company’s focus on flexibility, says David Condra, President of Dalcon. “NASBA is an open source shop and they were looking for flexibility from their provider,” he says. “Rather than a hard-wired, inflexible traditional PBX, we delivered software running on industry-standard computer and network hardware. We call it ‘investment protection’. With an open standard model, NASBA bought a system of interchangeable parts, where each component is individually upgradable. There’s no danger of the whole system going obsolete.” Dalcon builds its solutions using industry standard hardware such as Dell servers and Polycom IP phones, and open source software such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Asterisk—the dominant, open source PBX software, and adds its own DCM software to provide easy configuration and administration by the user.

Dalcon and NASBA developed a comprehensive implementation process, the first and most critical step of which was for Dalcon to develop the custom code necessary to enable IVR integration.

“We had some very particular needs and aggressive CTI requirements in our call centers,” says Barnicott. “Dalcon developed functionality that would allow us to access an in-progress call, find the specific records in our database pertaining to that caller and immediately display the call on our CSR’s screen. Being the solution developer, Dalcon, of course, had access to their root code, which made the customization process so much easier and enabled them to deliver what we needed at a much lower investment than other providers, who were reselling other solutions and were twice or even 3-times the cost.”

Over the next several months, Dalcon worked with NASBA IT staff, configuring and testing the system and working through a range of technical details.  “We had a very deliberate and incremental implementation plan detailed down to the day and to every aspect of the system,” says Dalcon’s Condra. “We emphasized communication throughout, because NASBA is a big, technically oriented organization, with a lot of parts and pieces.”

Easy-to-Use, Feature-Rich

“We signed off on the Dalcon system four months ago and I haven’t given a lot of thought to it since,” says Barnicott. “And when I say I haven’t thought about it, that’s the biggest compliment I can give.”

In addition to its dependability, the Dalcon system has impressed Barnicott for its range of features – notably the Follow-Me and Voicemail-to-Email capabilities – and its ease-of-use. “We’re totally refurbishing on one of our floors, which disrupts everything and everbody. People are constantly moving from desk to desk, and at one point we had 20 people working out of our conference room,” he says. “With our old system, moving people’s phone lines around would have been a technical and logistical nightmare, but with a software-based solution, like Dalcon, you just take your phone and plug it into any data network jack at the new location and you’re ready to go.”

Barnicott points out that NASBA runs its Dalcon system on a single Dell server, which validates his belief that scaling the Dalcon system to meet NASBA’s future demands can be done with minimal cost and downtime. “Expanding to 600 phones is simply a matter of adding an off-the-shelf Dell server, any lines required and the additional licenses for that box,” he says. “So for literally a fraction of the cost of a traditional, proprietary phone system, we’ve got a world-class, open, software-based system that will manage all our present and future requirements and can do it without even breathing hard.”

Trinity is a community hospital faithfully serving rural Tennessee. They have about 25 beds and 120 employees. Thanks to a forward-thinking CEO, they now have a state-of-the-art Dalcon system running on the first PRI lines installed in their county. Trinity Hospital may be small and rural, but now they’re just as connected as the largest hospitals in America.

Though Trinity’s choice process was well-executed, their communications change wasn’t exactly… uh, planned. A total failure of their Nortel system was the catastrophic catalyst. “I was at a friend’s house on a Sunday afternoon when I got the call that our phone system has crashed,” recounts Yvette. “I emailed Dalcon. Within an hour, a representative contacted me! I had a web demo and consultation at 8:30 the next morning.”

In the next days, Yvette spoke with her network team and collected quotes from competitors. “I checked out your references and Dalcon came highly recommended. And you significantly out-priced the competition. I placed the order and within a week we were up and running… we would have been sooner but for waiting for the new PRI lines.” Yvette’s convinced Dalcon was a smart choice: “From consultation through design, intallation and training, it went beautifully.”

The demands of smaller hospitals are unique, and in some ways greater than larger hospitals. Logistics and scale make Trinity’s staff extremely mobile. The DCM’s ability to “park” calls for physicians to pick up wherever they are has made Trinity “instant heroes” in the eyes of local physicians. And Dalcon’s wireless solution can liberate Trinity’s mobile staff from being shackled to desktop handsets.

The result? Better efficiencies and improved productivity.

With 10 fax lines, Trinity is “saving all kinds of money on paper, toner and improved communications.” And their new PRI lines have substantially reduced their monthly telecommunication costs.

The result? Trinity’s bottom line has Yvette smiling.

Further, since the Dalcon solution is so robust and scalable, Trinity is looking toward providing phone services to near-site facilities associated with the hospital. “You could have tried to sell our doctors additional systems – instead, you’re showing us how to expand on this system to provide value to physicians who associate with Trinity.”

Here’s a summary of Yvette Gillespie’s favorite Dalcon benefits:

• “Physicians love our ability to ‘park’ calls for them to pick up wherever they are.”
• “Follow-Me is ideal for people like me and my administrative staff.”
• “Our new PRI lines have significantly improved our communications.”
• “Fax-to-email is saving us all kinds of money…plus faxes in electronic form are so much easier to manage.”
• “Many of our phones are assigned to positions, rather than persons. Dalcon’s flexible management really helps facilitate that.”
• “We’re thrilled the system has unlimited ability to add phones – we can add another anywhere on our network simply for the cost of the handset itself.”
• “These speakerphones and Conference Room capabilities are simply great, and so easy to use.”

Call Dalcon today: (888) 588-6911

You just might be our next healthcare success story!

www.trinityhospitaltn.com

The Nashville Sports Council

When we sat down with Gary Alexander, their Senior VP & COO, he didn’t mince words: “I’ve been thrilled with the Dalcon Solution, but the thing that has impacted us the most is Dalcon’s outstanding service. Every step along the way, I never felt I was being ‘sold’. I was being served outstanding technical advice, and your installation team went beyond my expectations to help us in ways even outside of their contracted scope.”

Like many executives, Gary was assigned the responsibility of making a major technology asset acquisition for his organization. He is a business executive – not an IT specialist with detailed understanding of all the latest options or logistics that go into building a communications system. Gary may not have been able to tell a VoIP from a SIP. But he could tell you what his Dalcon Solution was deployed flawlessly.

“Dalcon made it easy. My sales consultant made all of the variables completely understandable. He looked out for our best interests. But best of all, Dalcon’s never really left us.” Gary raves about the ongoing support he receives from the Dalcon team: “It’s like I have a communications team that is only a phone call away. Anything I need, I can call and Dalcon’s response is simply great.”

While some companies rave about Dalcon’s robust solution, technical features and scalability, it’s clear the Nashville Sports Council is most impressed with Dalcon’s outstanding personnel and ongoing support. Dalcon’s President, Timothy Tyler, is excited: “It’s always gratifying to hear unsolicited praise from our clients. I’ve always believed our technical staff is second to none – and our customers continue to validate my belief time and again. That’s just as important as the national attention our software’s been receiving.”

Dalcon installs our award-winning DCM 2.0 on leading Intel-based servers. We provide handsets and speakerphones by the nation’s leaders in VoIP hardware. But the Dalcon Solution isn’t hardware. It’s software-based, built on open-standards. You’ll never be held hostage by proprietary hardware components that don’t work together.

But technology is one thing, and customer service and support is another. Dalcon has been serving businesses with technical support for 30 years. “Dalcon’s experience in this area really show,” says Gary. “For me, Dalcon made migrating to IP telephony and unified communications was simple. And our entire staff is knocked out with Dalcon. And we all easily modify our settings through our Internet browser. No more being tethered to technicians to change anything or move a phone.”

Call Dalcon today: (888) 588-6911

You’ll find it’s easier to focus on your business when you have a great telecommunications team too.

www.nashvillesports.com

Orchid operates facilities reaching from northern Mexico to Ontario. So with a reach like that, you can bet their communications solution needs to be rock solid and scalable. Their options? A. Keep their current system, B. Update their legacy system, C. Instead of just buying a phone system, select a unified communications partner. Their choice? C. Dalcon.

“Consultation, installation, training and support – Dalcon has proven to be an outstanding choice. We’ve never looked back,” says Tim Bryan, CIO. “We’re completely integrating our facilities. Even our non-technical people use Dalcon’s simple approach to increase efficiencies in ways I’d never have imagined.”

CFO Chris Strong is an advocate: “We love it. You couldn’t ask for a better interface than the DCM. And we’ve saved significantly on cellular and long-distance bills.” Chris is among those “non-technical people” who are leading the charge to even discard their desktop handsets for SoftPhones on their PCs. “We use our SoftPhones anywhere and save.”

Dalcon installs our award-winning DCM 2.0 on leading Intel-based servers. We provide handsets and speakerphones by the nation’s leaders in VoIP hardware. But the Dalcon Solution isn’t hardware. It’s software-based, built on open-standards. You’ll never be held hostage by proprietary hardware components that don’t work together.

And the DCM 2.0 isn’t simply user-friendly. A robust Linux platform, DCM 2.0 ensures stability and scalability – with complete integration of tele-workers and multiple sites.

Here’s what Tim Bryan says they’ve enjoyed most about Dalcon:

• “The personal customer service we receive is outstanding.”
• “We love the freedom of Dalcon’s open architecture approach.”
• “Our new MLPS lines have significantly improved our communications.”
• “Your remote access web interface administration is outstanding.”
• “Dalcon’s portability is important, in the event we’d ever have to move.”
• “Phone moves are now simply handled by the users.”
• “All of my travelers love the Follow Me and their laptop softphones.”
• “We really like getting our voicemails in our Outlook Inboxes.”
• “We set up our DIDs as personal fax numbers—we love getting faxes as PDFs in our Inboxes, and we fax directly out from our PCs.”
• “Our IP phones and laptop SoftPhones are very intuitive.”
• “Personal conference numbers by department is exceptional.”
• “Building call management trees is so easy and intuitive.”

Call Dalcon today: (888) 588-6911

You just might become the next amazing Dalcon success story.

www.orchidinternational.com