Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

At a glance

Maintel supports critical communication to maintain clinical quality and outcomes for 2 million patients

Company name:
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest, busiest and most successful in the UK. With a long tradition of clinical and scientific achievements, the Trust provides a full range of hospital and community services for people in Sheffield, as well as specialist care for patients from further afield.

The issue:
Critical Openscape 4000 and Openscape Voice PABXs required skilled and responsive support to deliver the internal and external voice communications that enable 20,000 staff across 5 hospitals to provide positive patient experiences and outcomes.

The project:
Maintel provides 24/7 coverage from 12 engineers and highly skilled technicians through its Network Operations Centre (NOC) and offers valuable expertise to support the Trust’s in-house teams.

The outcome:
An agile and collaborative approach has enabled efficient and reliable communication between patients, doctors and departments, and ongoing advice has allowed the Trust’s Telecoms teams to deliver increasingly self-sufficient fixes.

The Background

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the UK’s biggest providers of integrated hospital and community-based healthcare. Over 20,000 staff deliver more than 2 million patient contacts every year to the residents of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, Mid Yorkshire and North Derbyshire and also some highly specialist services to all parts of England.

In the face of rapidly increasing service demands, the Trust needed a highly skilled and responsive support partner to maintain the internal and external voice communications that are critical to their day-to-day operational services and positive patient outcomes and experiences.

The Challenge

The Trust manages five of Yorkshire’s best known teaching hospitals including Northern General Hospital, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Charles Clifford Dental Hospital, Weston Park Cancer Hospital and Jessop Wing Maternity Hospital.

Encompassing two city campuses and over 20 community sites, the Trust’s Atos Unify estate had historically been supported by a third party.

Effective staff and patient communication across the Trust’s voice solution was critical to maintaining high quality provision of patient care, staff training, clinical excellence and innovation in medical research. Any outages, faults or failures would lead to lengthy call queues for patients, leading to frustration, delays and complaints.

The mixed economy of new and legacy technology for voice, on such a scale meant the trust sought a partner with in-depth knowledge and expertise in supporting the existing infrastructure.

The Solution

Maintel provided industry leading support services including a Network Operations Centre (NOC) with 24/7 service coverage from highly skilled technicians.

The Trust had well established Telecoms teams across both campuses, and wanted to structure a contract that would allow them to become more self-sufficient. As they had previously been reliant on the incumbent provider’s diminishing product knowledge, the Trust did not wish to find themselves with a lack of internal expertise again.

Upskilling staff to fully understand faults along with the possible solutions was a priority, and Maintel’s 12 embedded engineers committed to supporting the internal teams to confidently tackle everyday issues.

What are the benefits?

The improved responsiveness and access to relevant, readily available expertise has particularly been felt by the Trust’s switchboard operators, who are responsible for logging the majority of faults.

Many of the team had previously lost faith in the system due to lengthy difficulties fixing operator consoles or out-of-hours faults that the Trust’s in-house engineers were unable to rectify in the interim.

Since Maintel’s support contract commenced, operators have been impressed by the rapid and reliable response they have received and the ease and constancy of communication. This reactive support ensures that patient calls efficiently reach their destination, improving overall experience.

For the first time, the Trust’s own engineers have a direct relationships with Maintel’s engineers, allowing them to work together and build trust and true partnership. In the past, development for the Telecoms teams required a generic training course. A timely chat with a Maintel engineer who has all the relevant context achieves much improved understanding, and supports the in-house teams in carrying out their own interim fixes.

What does the future hold?

As a hospital, the Trust will always provide services to patients in physical locations with a physical telecoms infrastructure. While a fully cloud based solution is not on the horizon, telephones may be rationalized in the future, and utilizing Atos Teams interconnectivity to improve staff communication is an obvious next step.

With a solid, stable telephony platform, the Trust have the opportunity to build on a strong foundation going forward. Any future innovation and digital telephony requirements can be a gradual journey instead of a wholesale change, allowing the team to improve services for users with minimal disruption.