NHS Contractor Outsources IT to Focus on Delivering Patient Care

HARROGATE, England, December 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Hosted IT Environment Allows Growth of The Practice to Operate 60 Surgeries, Specialist Clinics and Walk-in Centres Across the UK

A community-based healthcare service provider with 60 surgeries and walk-in centres across the UK, has outsourced its IT infrastructure to Cloud services specialist InTechnology so it can concentrate on improving patient care.

Contracted by the NHS, The Practice started with only a handful of surgeries, but since working with InTechnology it has grown significantly and now delivers clinical services and runs specialist clinics for over 180,000 patients. InTechnology now manages a whole range of ICT services for The Practice and provides secure links to the NHS N3 network.

Howard Gooder, commercial director at The Practice, said: "We wanted a hosted solution that was efficient, robust and reliable. The last thing we need is for our telephone system to go down first thing on a Monday morning just when our patients need us.

"InTechnology has provided us with a high-availability network, carrying both voice and data and enables rapid communication between locations.

"Unity Call Recording is the latest service that we've taken from InTechnology to improve our efficiency and the level of care we can give our patients."

InTechnology hosts The Practice's Unity Call Recording solution which captures up to 1,000 calls per day. This innovative technology allows incoming calls to be analysed. For example, it creates reports on how many patients hang up without having their calls answered. As a result of this information, The Practice decided to establish a Patient Contact Centre which acts as a central hub in the event of high volumes of patient calls. Any calls that cannot be answered by the surgery or clinic are re-routed which allows them to be dealt with immediately, improving both efficiency and the patient's experience.

Natalie Duffield, director of sales and customer management at InTechnology, said: "Now that we are handling most of its back-end IT operations, The Practice is able to concentrate on its partnership with the NHS and customer service, rather than managing its IT.

"It chose us as a partner due to our experience in the healthcare sector and because we integrate with N3, the national network for the NHS. Our hosted solutions provide the organisation with a flexible and resilient infrastructure which supports its aggressive strategy for growth."

Gooder said: "This has been a success story on both sides - we've been able to make suggestions about the services and InTechnology's expertise and support has helped us grow our business."

The hosted services provided to The Practice by InTechnology are:

• A secure network that allows voice and data to be converged onto the same connection
• Separate secure links to the NHS N3 Network
• Data management services and backup for all of The Practice's surgeries
• A range of Unified Communications services including IP Telephony (VoIP) services, Hosted Exchange for email and Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS).

About InTechnology:

InTechnology (http://www.intechnology.com) is one of the UK's leading service providers and delivers Cloud-based services to over 800 public and private sector businesses across the UK. It has an unrivalled mix of skills embracing Network, Hosting, Data, Voice and Unified Communications. InTechnology is also the first UK provider to integrate hosted IP Telephony with Microsoft OCS and offer it as a fully managed, hosted service. We've now added Hosted Exchange to the solution and to provide a complete, unique and fully managed Unified Communications package. With 25 years experience as leaders and innovators in the managed services market, InTechnology continue to be ahead of the curve in the solutions they bring to their customers.