The client is a major U.S. healthcare corporation that, through its subsidiaries, partnerships, and joint ventures, operates almost 100 general acute care hospitals, dozens of short-stay surgical hospitals, and almost 500 outpatient centers in the United States, along with several facilities in the United Kingdom. The company is experiencing continuous growth and expansion, including hundreds of urgent care clinics across the U.S., and has been a MetTel customer since 2014.

The healthcare company was growing steadily, but its telecom systems were expensive, aging, and built on outdated technology. It depended on multiple carriers for connectivity across the country, which meant processing and managing many invoices and contracts. The result was inconsistent rates across the organization, overwhelming invoice and contract administration, and a decentralized approach to network monitoring and management.

The company needed more bandwidth and was paying unreasonably high prices for the limited capacity it had. A few locations ran premise-based call center systems, but there was no cohesive plan for handling high volumes of patient calls or for the future of the telephony estate. Business continuity was a further concern.

Any solution had to be deployed consistently to every location without interfering with normal operations, and it had to support the rapid opening of new clinics.

MetTel sent specialists to review the company's telecommunications and design a system-wide solution. The review established two priorities: unified billing with visibility into telecom spend and advanced services to reduce costs and improve efficiency, and increased connectivity and bandwidth for the hundreds of urgent care clinics across the U.S.

MetTel delivered a Cloud PBX system with IP phones, digitally transforming more than 2,000 lines in hundreds of offices and replacing old premise-based equipment. It deployed Cloud Contact Center at locations that handle high volumes of patient calls. It also implemented Managed SD-WAN with 4G backup, bonding broadband with MPLS for greater resiliency, throughput, and bandwidth at lower cost. MetTel interconnects with many MPLS carriers through network-to-network interfaces into six fully redundant SD-WAN gateways around the country, and its NOC of certified engineers monitors and manages the SD-WAN 24/7/365.

To speed up clinic openings, MetTel used a templated approach for installing cloud voice services and bonded MPLS with broadband at every new urgent care clinic. The entire communication system is managed on MetTel's Bruin platform, which provides real-time insight into inventory, usage, spend, reporting, and repairs.

• $3.01 million in annual savings delivered in 2015, a 46% saving versus local exchange carriers, with continued year-to-year savings
• 64 carriers and 3,276 service accounts consolidated into one bill, one portal, and one point of contact
• Services migrated from more than 50 carriers to a single billing platform with line-by-line spend tracking
• Cloud PBX, Cloud Contact Center, and SD-WAN provide built-in disaster recovery with added redundancy and resiliency
• Cloud-based call center runs more effectively with superior staff planning, management, and reporting