IRVINE, Calif., April 25, 2012 ― Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Telecommunication Systems Division (Toshiba) — www.telecom.toshiba.com, has helped Atlantic General Hospital connect its employees, doctors and patients and handle more than 200,000 telephone calls a month with Toshiba’s Strata® CIX™ IP business telephone system. Established in 1993, Atlantic General Hospital (AGH) is a 62-bed community hospital in Berlin, Md., serving Worcester County and the surrounding region on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Virginia and lower Delaware. AGH has 25 locations with more than 750 employees and 211 physicians. AGH’s mission is to provide quality care, personalized service and education to improve individual and community health.

Glenn Lebedz, director of Support Services for AGH, identified the need for a business telephone system that would:

• Network 14 telephone systems together across 18 locations with a single user interface to provide integrated services to more than 750 users;
• Reliably handle 200,000+ monthly calls;
• Enable the hospital’s telecommunications team to remotely manage the entire system;
• Be standardized while still allowing customization for users and departments;
• Allow the hospital to have a mix of IP and digital telephones;
• Provide disaster recovery and geographical survivability with failover support, thus reducing single points of failure;
• Facilitate expansion scalability, allowing the hospital to add systems, telephones and applications, as needed; and
• Reduce overall cost of ownership by cutting costs for maintenance and software as well as local telephone services.

AGH turned to Atlantic Technology Services Inc. of Salisbury, Md.  Atlantic Technology Services has been an Authorized Toshiba Dealer for more than six years.

Todd Justice, president of Atlantic Technology Services Inc., recommended Toshiba’s Strata CIX IP business telephone system to meet AGH’s needs.

Installed by Atlantic Technology Services, AGH has a Toshiba business telephone system that consists of:

• A Strata CIX1200 business telephone system at its main hospital location;
• A Strata CIX670 at its Atlantic Health Center site, which houses the hospital’s walk-in care, diabetes education, and behavioral health departments;
• Two Strata CIX200 systems at its medical office buildings;
• A Strata CIX100 at its ACE Complex, which houses its physician billing and patient account offices in two separate buildings;
• Strata CIX40 systems at four other smaller sites;
• More than 550 digital telephones and 100 IP telephones plus 100 additional IP telephones for four off-site locations that connect remotely to the hospital’s Strata CIX1200;
• Strata Net to connect systems into an integrated IP network for direct extension dialing and paging between locations as well as system redundancy and failover;
• Multiple Strata ACD contact center solutions with TASKE reporting;
• Strata MAS with Auto Attendant, Unified Messaging and other applications for a single server solution; and
• Network eManager® for centralized remote management of all systems.

Result #1: 24/7 Reliability With Redundancy

The Toshiba system met the hospital’s goal of 24/7 reliability facilitated by redundancy and survivability solutions across the networked systems to ensure backup in case there is a power or Local Exchange Carrier outage in the area.

Result #2:  Internal Admin for More Control

Using Toshiba’s Network eManager remote administration tool, Lebedz and his team can now internally manage the entire telephone system using their desk or laptop computers virtually anywhere there is an Internet connection.  The team can remotely make adds, moves and changes, as well as system-wide upgrades and other administrative tasks, for all 18 locations.

Result #3: Improved Call Center Capabilities

For the hospital’s contact center, Toshiba’s Strata ACD provides rules-based call routing to the agents to handle important patient and physician calls.  Using TASKE reporting, both the telecommunications team and contact center supervisor can easily run and view reports.

Bottom Line: AGH Gains Reliable Telephone Capabilities While Saving Thousands of Dollars With Toshiba’s Strata CIX

Toshiba’s Strata CIX telephone systems have met AGH’s communications objectives, including:

• 24/7 reliability facilitated by redundancy and survivability solutions, ensuring that every single call gets through, which has helped support AGH’s mission to provide quality care, personalized service and education to improve both individuals and the community;
• Ability to remotely self-administrate the system, improving the speed at which changes are made while reducing the need for costly and time-consuming service calls;
• System scalability, which allows the hospital to add systems or telephones and applications as needed;
• Reduced telecommunication costs by eliminating expensive maintenance and software costs;
• Cut-over from previous system without interruption; and
• Overall reduced Total Cost of Ownership with a reduction of 62 percent annual costs over the previous system and a 22 percent savings on local telephone charges, resulting in an anticipated return on investment over three years.

“Together, Toshiba and Atlantic Technology Services delivered on our Top 3 goals:  24/7 reliability, the ability to self-administrate, and significantly reduced annual telecom costs.  It’s a winning combination,” said Glenn Lebedz, director, Support Systems at Atlantic General Hospital.

For an Authorized Toshiba Dealer, Visit:  www.telecom.toshiba.com