NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde Case Study

NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde (NHSGG&C) one of the largest health boards in Europe has demonstrated the powerful benefits of better cost control and performance monitoring when it turned to AKJ for a unique telecoms solution.

Background

NHSGG&C is one of the largest health boards in Europe covering a population of 1.2 million with 44,000 staff. The board consists of 34 hospitals, 32 health centres, 114 clinics, resource centres, GP’s and management buildings with over 26,000 extensions.

Customer Challenges

As a large and complex organisation, NHSGG&C wanted to ensure that they had complete control of their telecoms estate, costs and usage. When tendering the contract for a managed voice network, NHSGG&C took the opportunity to include specific requirements to help them address the following challenges:

To accurately allocate call and rental costs on a per extension and cost centre basis.
To be able to challenge usage and track details of call records with ease.
To have the facility to search for specific traffic reports such as DQ calls, mobile calls and international calls etc.
To have the ability to have real time searches undertaken on key critical numbers.
To provide accurate answer performance statistics for both operator service and in-bound direct dial calls.
To report standards against the service levels set by the Scottish Executive and the Health Minister.

Owing to the complex nature of the managed voice network and customer specific nature of the requirements, Cable and Wireless (the winning contractor) invited telecoms billing and management information experts AKJ to create a bespoke solution that would meet the billing and information requirements of NHSGG&C in full.

The AKJ Solution

AKJ worked very closely with NHSGG&C to create a bespoke solution that captures both billing and call logging data across the telecoms estate, and presents it in a clear and meaningful manner through a single system. Karen McSweeney, Telecoms Manager at the NHSGG&C explains “We had many meetings with AKJ and Cable and Wireless and worked with them to achieve a system that meets and indeed surpasses our needs”.

The fully managed solution developed by AKJ captures details of all extension level activity throughout the organisation via a network of remote data logging devices. This data is fed back to a host management centre on a daily basis where it is processed to generate the wide range of financial and management information; which is available via the AKJ reporting systems.

As each part of the organisation, be it a hospital or clinic has different requirements, the solution also allows each centre to receive tailored reports.

For example a hospital may want to apportion costs against budgetary departments where as a GP, who is a private business may want a single easy to read summary of costs and usage, to manage their own expenditure.

Reports can be run for a single extension, group of extensions or site allowing NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde to focus on answer patterns, monitor key extensions and target misuse to manage their call spend. In addition by mapping the internal telephone directory against the reporting, each cost centre can quickly see who is making calls, more easily target ways to improving customer service and also identify ways to generate significant cost savings.

This management tool enables NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde to easily manage and monitor its internal usage policies ensuring that misuse or routing issues are quickly picked up on. For example; premium rate numbers, incorrectly routed mobile calls, excessively long calls and expensive international calls. Karen McSweeney comments “Now that we are better able to target misuse, we expect to reduce our telephone costs by at least 20% - which is a huge saving”.

In addition, the AKJ solution enables NHS GG&C to measure its answer performance against the targets set in its own charter and laid down by the National Health Service. This is something they had been unable to do before. Importantly, there are also certain key extensions at each hospital that are, in effect, emergency extensions and calls to these extensions need to be accurately logged in case of any complaint, enquiry or litigation.

AKJ Introduce Phone Sleuth Enterprise

Whilst the initial solution enabled each cost centre to simply access their telecoms information, the organisation also required a powerful solution that would enable all usage data to be reported on centrally. With over 26,000 extensions making millions of calls a year, NHS GG&C had found traditional analysis software and online systems unable to support the complexity of their data.

To meet this requirement, AKJ introduced their Phone Sleuth Enterprise application which allows users to rapidly drill down to individual call records, complete detailed investigations and generate bespoke reports on demand.

In one case, NHS GG&C were able to use Phone Sleuth Enterprise to investigate and trace a burglar following a break in at one of its buildings where staff believed that the intruder may have made a call whilst in the office. With access to all data a rapid search was completed and the relevant information was handed over to the Police.

Karen McSweeney comments: “We do not have access to live traffic but if something was to happen – as it does in a hospital – we would contact AKJ to say that we need the information within the hour and they would provide that data to us very quickly. From that point of view, the AKJ solution is excellent and the level of support we have received has been superb.”

Customer Benefits

NHS GG&C have utilised the AKJ solution for over 6 years enjoying a number of benefits including;

Transparent cost allocation to divisions / departments etc.
Substantial cost savings through targeting misuse and abuse.
Improved control of facilities and staff.
Improved communication links to local councils etc.
Delivering a better service to external callers.
Ability to demonstrate cost savings to NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, the Scottish Executive and the Health Minister.

Karen concludes “I would say that many enterprises and certainly every hospital and health board should have this facility – in some shape or form – because of the control that it gives you.”

“The AKJ products are invaluable in the tracking and tracing of calls and tracking call spends in Glasgow Heath Board and it will play a continued pivotal part in the future.”

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