Telephone Excellence by Mike Mitchell

Make Sure Your New PBX Works with Your 'Old' Systems
By Mike Mitchell

How many of us will be installing a PBX in our hospitals in the near future? How many of us will be installing a different brand of PBX from the one that we presently use? Well, don't forget one of the most important steps in the project management process; testing your new PBX with all of the systems to which you currently provide telephony interfaces!

Sometimes we overlook the simple systems which we know will work with the new PBX. You can save yourself a lot of trouble by brainstorming with a group of experienced employees to identify all of the systems to which you provide services. This method is much more reliable than the "I think I know all the systems to which we provide services" method.

If your hospital is like mine, there is a plethora of clinical equipment dependant on the dial tone. We can't assume that the PBX vendor will know what to test, or even how to test it. That vendor is depending on the Telecom staff to supply a list of clinical and business related systems that require testing. A good idea is to write full system testing into the RFP, including the expected outcome and testing documentation.

Even if you are well aware of the clinical equipment, do you know what kind of integration or interface is required to communicate with it? What are the technical specifications and how does the new PBX meet those specs? How do the features differ, and what employees are affected by those differences?

Here is a good example of a possible problem. Our hospital operators use a feature called "park and page." This is not a unique feature. However, say you have multiple PBXs within the same facility operating as one large voice network using one database. Now you're considering replacing it with multiple PBXs from another vendor and manufacturer. In this instance, "park and page" might be called by another name or work differently. Or it might not work at all.

Here is a brief list of often overlooked equipment which should be tested:

Music on Hold
OAI integration links
Time and Attendance systems
Interactive Voice Response units
Medicine storage and supply stations
T-1 trunking _ D4 or ESF, AMI or B8ZS
ACDs or Call Recorders which are not part of the PBX
Dictation equipment _ dictation and transcription stations
Elevator telephones _ could use a hotline or a dialer to make a call
Nurse Call systems _ the integration could be loop start, ground start, E & M, etc
Wireless telephone systems - transfer codes and feature codes are usually different
Call Accounting systems _ the data stream is usually different but can be customized
Stand alone paging systems using analog dial tone with a separate telephony interface
System wide paging systems _ the input could use either a station or a trunk connection

It's our responsibility as Telecom professionals to know more about our hospital's systems than the PBX vendor. Diligence before the cutover is the best path to a smooth installation.

-Mike-