Herts Urgent Care (HUC) is a social enterprise providing NHS services. It delivers high-quality primary and urgent care services to more than 4.5 million patients across the east and the south-west of England. In addition, it provides business support services to other healthcare partners. Its team of nearly 1,400 employees collaborates with around 450 GPs and other clinical professionals to ensure the patient is at the heart of its services.
HUC wanted to work with a partner to develop a strategic, cohesive plan to support the organisation, which had recently been appointed as a Tier One provider of essential services to the NHS. It needed a strategic partner it could depend upon and someone who could engage quickly.
Prior to engaging with Redcentric, HUC’s IT team had identified three key challenges and these were the following:
Strategic vision alignment
Performance improvement and consolidation
Futureproofing and agility
Refreshingly, where IT suppliers are concerned, there was never any hard sell. It was very consultancy and advisory-led from the start, supporting our needs rather than their agenda.
Having already worked together on connectivity, Callum McCourt, HUC’s Head of IT Infrastructure, was aware of Redcentric’s healthcare pedigree, its expertise, and its broad solution portfolio. He turned to Redcentric to help map out the optimal route to achieve its vision of moving towards an SD-WAN network, while also tackling some immediate concerns.
Improved availability – HUC switched to Fortinet firewalls, with two HA pairs going into Redcentric’s London data centre. The impact was instant, with availability consistently at six nines, well in excess of the SLA, and the throughput hugely increased.
Improved performance – Fortinet switches and Access Points (APs) were replaced across the network – with the difference in performance described as ‘the difference between night I day’.
Improving security – Resilience and security was improved by addressing a single point of failure in the legacy Devon Doctors’ network
Flexibility – A challenging contact centre relocation project, with unexpected scope changes around connectivity, was successfully managed
Callum McCourt explained that the progress HUC has made can be largely attributed to the way Redcentric engaged and worked as a strategic partner. He said,
“Refreshingly, where IT suppliers are concerned, there was never any hard sell. It was very consultancy and advisory-led from the start, supporting our needs rather than their agenda. Redcentric facilitated a strategic discussion with Fortinet and the resultant plan was a game-changer: here was a way to lead us to an SD-WAN networking future while also tackling some of our immediate concerns.”
The resultant plan was a game-changer: here was a way to lead us to an SD-WAN networking future while also tackling some of our immediate concerns.
Redcentric’s domain expertise, service scope and ‘can-do’ responsiveness have been leveraged by the HUC team, who saw increasing value in the partnership with Redcentric as they tackled problems together. Benefits for HUC included:
Getting future-fit – Given NHS England’s ‘Internet first’ ambition, longer-term uncertainties around HSCN and HUC’s own drive to expand, HUC now has the kind of strategic vision, network capability and partnership that will support it to respond to change and growth.
Enhancing user experience: The increases in uptime and throughput mean a highly performant network to underpin service delivery. Call handlers and clinical staff enjoy faster, more reliable access to systems which translates into the ability to help patients quicker.
Streamlining networks: HUC was able to consolidate networks and simplify network management. The new network will provide a route to the future adoption of SD-WAN, providing HUC with even greater agility and flexibility.
Enhancing patient care: A fast, resilient network and the ability to innovate around service delivery means that patients are the ultimate beneficiaries. With demand growing and the NHS under unprecedented pressure, HUC can do more to help drive better health outcomes.
Greater collaboration: Working side-by-side with Redcentric and Fortinet, HUC has been able to solve some of the immediate operational challenges and has mapped out a strong vision for the longer term, drawing on the healthcare pedigree of both suppliers and giving HUC real confidence for the future.
