Supporting Building Growth with Network Expansion

The Challenge

As a hospital expands by 500,000 square feet, nearly doubling in size, the client realized the expansion would limit its LTE and 4G capabilities thus impacting the medical staff and administrators’ daily routines.

The hospital’s pre-expansion Distributed Antenna System supported all carriers. As the needs of patients grew, the hospital decided to expand their building. In doing so, the all-inclusive network would cease to function totally. If this network barrier occurred, it would break down important wireless communication between doctors, staff, administrators, and patients’ families.

The network needed to be expanded before the communication barriers happened. Especially now that LTE and 4G technologies are standard for wireless communication, the expansion of the hospital became moot. Without ubiquitous communication across the campus, the expansion would not deliver any benefits to the staff or patients.

Creating a Proactive Solution

To support the hospital’s expansion and its mission for quality patient care, Vertex was met with a list of challenges. To begin, we needed to design and install a working Distributed Antenna System that supported four major carriers within the new and existing building space.

Since the large complex already used AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, we needed to be proactive. To ensure that operations continued to run smoothly during and after the expansion, we took action to create a new updated network that covered all areas.

For this client, we needed to implement a solution that worked in two different ways. As the endgame was to continue seamless communication, we overcame this challenge by making sure the existing Distributed Antenna System remained functional during the expansion.

While the older system stayed in place during construction, we maintained its functionality to support the expansion. Once the construction was completed, we replaced the system with a DAS network that covered twice the original area.

Then we were met with another challenge. Our client had already made a significant investment in their physical growth, so we needed to make sure that their expenses did not surpass their budget. We maximized their investment to include a digital expansion that would ensure the continuation of top-notch patient care, today and in the future.

In addition, we knew that the hospital expansion meant not only more patients, but also more administrative work. Before the plans were drawn, the staff had used their mobile devices to communicate on prescriptions, for doctor to doctor consultations, cost calculations, and a variety of administrative functions.

It was crucial that we not only implemented a technological solution, but that we also worked with the carriers and hospital legal staff in the contract agreements with the current service providers. We ensured that the hospital continued to function at its optimal level in medical and administrative capacities.

Before and during the hospital’s transition to a larger building, we handled the entire project from start to finish, including equipment details and labor. Because we took this comprehensive approach, communication went uninterrupted during and after the expansion was completed.

The Outcome

The hospital kept up with its mission of top patient care during the transition. Because we implemented a proactive solution, communication breakdowns never occurred. After we conducted a holistic review of functionality, the expansion allowed the hospital to improve its daily operations and care for more patients.

Vertex also provided ongoing routine checkups to ensure that all devices functioned at their optimal level. This work guaranteed that the medical and administrative staff could utilize effective wireless communication every day without any interruptions.

In the near future, the hospital will add a Main Operating Base for administrative work only. We will oversee their system update next year, so this medical office will be able to communicate with the main campus without any interruption.