New Telecommunications System For Country’s Busiest Hospital

Waikato Hospital, which has more than 6000 incoming telephone calls a day making it the country’s busiest hospital, is to get a new $2.25 million telecommunications system.

The Waikato District Health Board today approved the spending along with $414,000 of one-off operational funding and an additional annual spend of $180,000. Work on the upgrade starts tomorrow.

At its meeting in Te Kuiti today, the Waikato DHB board heard from chief information officer Alan Grainer that the existing PABX system was in desperate need of an upgrade as it could not meet existing demands and future needs.

There have been significant constraints on the system in the past three years with a freeze on new phone extensions.

“The risk of losing voice services and impact on health service continuity has become significant,” said Mr Grainer.

“This project will ensure continuity of telephone services throughout Waikato Hospital and campus by relocating, and in some cases replacing, all telecommunications equipment currently located in the Menzies PABX room to a new server room under the Emergency Department and providing upgraded equipment and voice services across the Waikato campus.”

This shift of PABX needs to be done by October so there is no delay to the Waikato Hospital building programme. Work needed to start immediately.

“Telephone technology has moved considerably in the past 10 years with a distinct move away from analogue phones and into digital phones that provide significant reduction in cabling cost, superior flexibility with numbering schemes, and a functionality revolution in terms of what the phones can do.

“Replacement of the existing analogue server, together with extension of the digital services, is essential to cope with the expected growth resulting from the changes in the physical buildings on campus, and to meet increased user requirements in clinical areas,” said Mr Grainer.

At the end of this project, the Waikato DHB will have:

ENDS