Regional health authority cuts costs, consolidates services and achieves best value

Named after the respected Welsh labour politician and founder of the British National Health Service, Aneurin Bevan Health Board (ABHB) has a big reputation to live up to. It does so by serving almost one quarter the population of Wales from 15 hospitals together with clinics, health centres and other facilities.

Behind the scenes the ABHB IT team has also been hard at work. Thanks to its efforts, and with a little help from us, the authority has achieved best value right across its telecommunications, reduced call costs significantly and has access to much improved billing information, all online. What’s more it was all accomplished with a very smooth migration from ABHB’s previous provider.

The Benefits

  • 40% savings across ABHB’s telecommunications.
  • One supplier and one contact for all services.
  • Reliable and flexible service.
  • Confidence from working with an experienced NHS supplier.
  • Access to simple, easy to use, online billing tool.
  • Improved resilience with numbers in the cloud.

The Challenge

Formed by the merger in 2009 of seven previously separate health bodies, ABHB inherited a complex estate of telephony systems and services with different suppliers. The end result was no single point of contact or accountability when problems arose. Also a diverse range of billing data from multiple sources made extracting meaningful management information difficult and time consuming.

The board’s Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall major acute hospitals have sophisticated telephone-linked paging systems used to summon critical care staff in emergencies, for example cardiac arrests. Any supplier willing to take on the estate would need to be able to accommodate these critical services competently.

The Solution

The ABHB requirement was concise and clear cut: reduce call costs, consolidate services, and deliver overall best value. Following advice from a large existing customer, ABHB chose our combined calls and lines solution. Using Gamma SIP Trunks from the cloud wherever possible, the move involved changing a large number of lines over at smaller, outlying locations as well as those at high-volume central sites.

With efficient project management in place the changeover was made smoothly and quickly. We now handle 99.99% of all ABHB’s inbound and outbound telephone traffic, bringing significantly reduced call and rental costs.

Billing has been simplified and with secure online access, ABHB staff can benefit from new levels of reporting.

Using the Gamma network for outbound calls to mobiles has reduced costs still further.

Where before ABHB found it difficult to exercise full control over a dispersed and varied telephony estate, the consolidation of services makes centralised control a reality.

Service stability problems are no longer an issue and ABHB’s in-house support staff routinely report ‘no problems’.

We also offered assistance in helping ABHB implement new billing procedures and systems.

99.99%

Inbound & Outbound Telephone Traffic Handled