OXFORD HEALTH TRUST TO SAVE OVER £1 MILLION WITH CLOUD-BASED TELEPHONY SYS

• New system to provide greater staff flexibility and better service for patients
• Hosted telephony service will cover up to 140 sites and 3000 extensions
• Single architecture to replace four separate telephony systems and additional exchange lines

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust is expecting to save over £1 million in costs over five years by replacing its four existing phone systems and additional exchange lines with a cloud-based service from Vodafone. The savings to be delivered are equivalent to the treatment costs of over 150 patients a year*.

The new system will cover up to 140 sites in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Somerset, with a total of 3000 phone extensions.

By moving to the Vodafone hosted telephony service based on off-site technology, Oxford Health will significantly reduce its operational costs by around £1million over 5 years. It will also simplify arrangements for staff and service users, allowing Oxford Health to redirect ICT resources to patient care. The Vodafone hosted telephony service will enable the Trust to scale flexibly so that phone lines can be increased according to demand.

The ambition was to reduce our telecommunications spend, redirect these resources to more productive activities and simplify the service for our users and those supporting our telephones,” explains Dominic McKenny, Director of Informatics at Oxford Health. “We were looking for a more flexible set-up that would support changes to our working practices and be responsive to changing business needs over time.”

“We also wanted to ensure that we don’t miss patient calls. For example, even if a patient rings the wrong Trust number, the new system will allow their calls to be forwarded to the correct service quickly and easily. This is particularly critical within a mental health setting, when callers may be in distress and need to speak to a clinician urgently,” said Dominic McKenny.

Richard Aspinall, Head of Regional Public Services at Vodafone UK, said, “Oxford Health is the first NHS body to install our Vodafone hosted telephony service, which represents an extremely cost-effective and simple solution suited to the Trust’s needs. The system also provides a good foundation for further innovation as the Trust looks to implement better ways of working and drive improvements in the provision of mental health and community services.”

Notes to editors
* Therapy costs vary but in this case as an example: community inpatient costs circa £260 per bed-day with an average length of stay of 25 days = £6,500 (figures from Oxford Health Trust)

** Vodafone has approx. 700 public sector customers using their cloud and hosting services which include hospitals, police, national and local government etc.