Founded a century ago, Denver Health supports 30% of all unsponsored care in Colorado and serves160,000 patients every year. With the state’s population doubling over the last thirty years, Denver Health’s executives sought to create operational efficiencies and help the hospital continue meeting the growing de...
Region’s Largest Safety Net Hospital Boosts Productivity with Pervasive Mobility
Region’s Largest Safety Net Hospital Boosts Productivity with Pervasive Mobility
Founded a century ago, Denver Health supports 30% of all unsponsored care in Colorado and serves160,000 patients every year. With the state’s population doubling over the last thirty years, Denver Health’s executives sought to create operational efficiencies and help the hospital continue meeting the growing demands of Colorado’s residents. As their primary goals, Denver Health executives wanted to maximize staff productivity, control costs and institute innovative practices by providing wireless connectivity to caregivers throughout the facility’s three in-patient and out-patient buildings. Like other industries reaping the benefits of newfound mobility, they were confident that the hospital could leverage technology to impact operations and improve care. First and foremost, hospital executives believed that greater mobility would enable caregivers to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on care activities. Giving staff instant, real-time access to critical patient data on their PDAs, laptops and mobile phones across the 1 million square foot campus would boost productivity, drive down costs and help reduce medical errors. “As the market moves from wired to wireless communications, hospitals and health centers are adopting new channels of communication that instantly link doctors, nurses, emergency personnel and patients to each other as well as vital information and equipment,” said Reuben Mezrich, M.D., Ph.D. Additionally, everyone at Denver Health wanted to simplify management and prevent the need to expose ceilings and walls for routine maintenance; this would require costly and disruptive infection control procedures and could interrupt existing wireless services. The well publicized impact of new applications, including patient telemetry and RFID, spurred Denver Health’s executives to take a long-term perspective. Maximizing their return on investment on the project would require support for future wireless requirements and unknown services. And Denver Health’s IT team wanted to avoid invasive new installations, re-engineering projects and emergency containment procedures, every time wireless services were added or modified. The Denver Health executive team realized that the hospital needed a comprehensive wireless solution that fit into the sensitive hospital ecosystem and helped caregivers work as efficiently as possible for years to come.
The Solution
Upon evaluating their needs from all angles, Denver Health executives selected the MobileAccess Universal Wireless Network--an award-winning in-building wireless solution tested in a variety of real-world hospital settings and world-class facilities. The innovative MobileAccess infrastructure provides a single, multi-service platform that simultaneously delivers pervasive wireless coverage for all of the hospital’s operators, devices, and voice and data services. The highly scalable Wire-it-Once™ infrastructure brings together an ideal combination of low-loss fiber optics and coax cabling, reliably delivering patient data to caregivers’ laptops, PDAs and mobile devices throughout the hospital. Because of its modular Wire-it-Once™ architecture, adding new services to the MobileAccess platform is as simple as adding the appropriate service module in existing wiring closets. The system does not require additional cable runs or re-engineering, and by clustering the network’s intelligent components away from public areas, network management takes place in wiring closets, maintaining the aethetics of the facility. The result is a future-proof solution that is more cost-effective and manageable than parallel network alternatives. Leveraging MobileAccess technology helps Denver Health support improved staff communications, gain operational efficiencies and continue serving Colorado’s healthcare needs.
About MobileAccess
MobileAccess Networks is an enterprise wireless innovator that provides a universal platform for connecting the people and applications that drive business. The company’s intelligent, in-building infrastructure solution is the key to mainstream wireless connectivity in hospitals, office buildings, public venues and other large-scale facilities. The MobileAccess Universal Wireless Network delivers business-quality performance, scalability, security and signal reliability to more than 1000 customers, including Aladdin Resort and Casino, ALLTEL Stadium, American University, Clarian Health Partners, Hearst Corporation, Lehman Brothers, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Oakland International Airport, SeaMobile and The Homer Building. For more information, visit www.mobileaccess.com.
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