Memorial Hospital

Memorial Hospital’s legacy phone system was proprietary, so the ability to adapt and expand the system was very limited. Their phones did not work throughout the entire facility, breaking off communication between nurses who moved from one building to another at any point in the day. In an industry where every minute can be critical to saving the life of a patient, Memorial Hospital sought to eliminate that shortcoming.

The hospital’s IT staff called Matrix Integration to select wireless communications devices and a converged network with voice over IP. The nurses were consulted in the selection of the devices and ultimately chose Cisco Nurse Connect to link the phones to the pre-existing nurse call system. This solution allowed the nurses to use the system in new ways, including a new emergency contact system that contacts Emergency Room doctors and ICU nurses in addition to a particular floor’s staff when a “Code Blue�? occurs. By contacting the staff best equipped to handle the situation first, this system can shave critical minutes off of the time needed to communicate with all staff. Another important new capability is the Rapid Call feature, which a nurse can use to summon help with a patient. Now nurses can create a hands-free conference call, accessing multiple resources at the same time, where before they were limited to the first person who responded. With this new system in place, nurses can reach the right people to help with the particular circumstances they are facing.

Memorial Hospital is expanding their new system throughout the hospital as part of its continuing efforts to upgrade the communications system, and they continue to collaborate with Matrix and Cisco to improve their communications systems and make their work run more smoothly.