St. Vincent’s Medical Center
Implementing Technology: It’s All About Relationships
Serving Southwestern Connecticut and Westchester county, New York, St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport is a modern, 397-bed acute-care hospital offering more than fifty specialty and subspecialty medical and surgical disciplines. With 450 physicians on its medical staff, the medical center employs more than 1,800 people.
TPC Healthcare has a long-standing relationship with St. Vincent’s, dating back to the construction of the new medical center itself in the mid 1970s and continuing through the hospital’s new $45 million expansion. In a series of related projects beginning in 1996, TPC worked hand in hand with St. Vincent’s project management team to deliver new life safety and communication solutions to meet the medical center’s growing needs.
Starting with the replacement of the outdated life safety platform, TPC and the St. Vincent’s team brought the hospital’s critical fire alarm, smoke detection and monitoring equipment to a level appropriate for a facility of its size and complexity using EST’s network-based platform. This included key integration with the Landis Staefa HVAC systems.
Quieter Communication Solutions
Next TPC Healthcare replaced the facility’s aging nurse call system. Using Rauland-Borg’s state-of-the-art Responder® IV platform, TPC delivered a quieter communication solution that integrated Nortel Companion wireless PCS telephones. In 2005 this solution was expanded to include a combination of Vocera hands-free communicators and Nortel IP handsets. The solution minimized the need for overhead paging by passing calls and information from patients directly to caregivers.
Responder is powerful in its reach, covering the entire facility. Responder IV consoles intelligently route patient calls based on priority and type and succinctly relay important patient information to caregivers, regardless of their location within the facility. Management software provides adminstrators with quality of care indicators such as response time, enabling St. Vincent’s to deliver the award-winning level of service it’s known for.
Intimate, System-wide Knowledge
With over two decades of service at St. Vincent’s, TPC has developed intimate system-wide knowledge, acting as a trusted advisor. “TPC knows our life safety and nurse call infrastructure as well as we do,” says Keith Giannone, supervisor of project management at St. Vincent’s. “They know what’s in the walls, how our people use the systems and they take good care of us.”
About TPC Healthcare
Headquartered in Stratford, Connecticut, TPC Healthcare is a full-service technology and communications solutions provider delivering wireless voice, workflow/middleware messaging applications and managed support services to healthcare organizations. TPC Healthcare focuses on offering customers technology expertise, exceptional levels of service and years of experience developing healthcare communications solutions. For more information, visit www.tpchealthcare.com.