New health care partnership
is formed in Alberta

TELUS and Capital Health rewrite the rules

Canadian health care administrators would probably agree that they need to make the most of every opportunity, especially in today's times of tight budgets and growing demands on services. Often, that can mean looking for more than just the best price or terms of delivery when it comes to purchasing support services or product supplies. It can mean looking for ways to partner with providers so that all sides realize long term benefits.

That was certainly the idea behind the significant strategic alliance recently entered into between Alberta's Capital Health and TELUS.

Capital Health, Edmonton + Area, Alberta

Capital Health is Canada's largest academic health region. Funded by the Government of Alberta, it provides complete health services to one million residents in the cities of Edmonton, Fort Saskatchewan, Leduc, Spruce Grove and St. Albert, surrounding counties and nearby towns. It also serves a total of 1.6 million people across central and northern Alberta, providing specialized services such as trauma and burn treatment, organ transplants and high-risk obstetrics. As an academic-based health system, Capital Health works closely with the University of Alberta and other post-secondary institutions to train and prepare the next generation of health professionals.

In 2004, Alberta Venture Magazine named Capital Health one of the province's top five most innovative organizations - the only public sector organization to make the list. The same magazine also named Capital Health number one in its list of Top 50 Not for Profit and Charitable Organizations in Alberta, based on revenue, assets, number of employees and clients served.

Considering the number of people who rely on Capital Health for their health care, as well as the number of professionals who work with and for the region, it's not surprising that communications represent both an absolute necessity and a major expenditure. Patients need to call for appointments. Doctors need to consult on cases. Patient data must be securely transmitted from one location to another - and much more. As a result, Capital Health's management team believed that the region's voice and data communication needs provided an excellent opportunity to create a strategic relationship with the right provider.

"A strategic relationship is about knowing each other and committing to each other's business," says Donna Strating, Capital Health's Chief Information Officer. "You don't just pop in, do one piece and then leave. The long term nature of the relationship means we have the time and knowledge of each other's business to grow together."

Savings and increased functionality

Between them, the University of Alberta Hospital and the Leduc Community Hospital subscribed to more than 4,500 Centrex lines. To reduce costs and increase the functionality available to its employees and clients, Capital Health decided to move these two facilities to PBX environments. They wanted a solution that would enable 5-digit dialling across the region, allow users to dial into a single number and pick up voicemail from more than one facility, provide a business continuity model as part of their disaster recovery planning and begin introducing Internet Protocol (IP) technology that could be used to build on for future applications.

Capital Health put out a request, seeking proposals for both these immediate needs and for a longer term technology alliance. They chose TELUS, not simply because of the cost-effectiveness of the TELUS proposal, but because TELUS committed to ensuring that the needs of Capital Health are consistently addressed. TELUS undertook to appoint an alliance director to work with Capital Health, to hold regular quarterly meetings at the senior executive level, and more. In addition, the two organizations know each other well. "We already had a long term relationship," says Strating. "We felt that TELUS had a commitment to doing business a different way, leveraging the knowledge they had."

The two PBX systems have since been installed and Capital Health has already realized savings that will exceed $1 million per year. A 5-digit dialling plan now operates across most of the region's sites and will soon be available everywhere. The implementation, according to Strating, "went extraordinarily well."

Finding new opportunities

In addition to quoting on the PBX and other projects stipulated in the Request for Proposals, TELUS offered Capital Health a number of ways to save on future technology investments. But perhaps the most important advantage of the new alliance has come from the two organizations' people working together.

A TELUS team is on-site permanently at Capital Health to ensure that everything keeps operating the way it should. And Capital Health has discovered new opportunities that otherwise might not have arisen.

For example, Capital Health, TELUS and Siemens are considering creating a system that will bring both clinical information and entertainment to patient bedsides in hospitals. To improve the efficiency of health care delivery, the aim is to give doctors and other health care professionals access to a patient's files in real time, while working with that patient through a bedside terminal.

In addition, when Capital Health heard about the TELUS HomeSitter solution, they asked TELUS to work with them on creating a version to support patients and health care workers in a home care environment. With this system, a relative can be at work and still see and talk to a patient who is receiving home care. Or the son or daughter of a frail elderly person can be alerted if the parent leaves home without proper care. "We are working with TELUS to identify cameras and other devices that will provide the level of quality our medical professionals will require," says Marguerite Rowe, Capital Health's Chief Operating Officer, Community Care, Rehabilitation and Mental Health.

A vision for the future

Strating sees the alliance with TELUS continuing to evolve. "A big portion of improving health services is improving the access to services," she says. "That will involve telecommunications, for example, being able to put in an enterprise-wide scheduling system that can find the next MRI for a patient, anywhere in our service area."

Capital Health is also in the process of deploying a major PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System) implementation. This will allow Capital Health professionals to instantly share large image files such as X-rays. A doctor in Edmonton, for example, will be able to consult with a pediatric specialist in Vancouver, without having to wait for records or images to be sent in more traditional ways. TELUS will provide the substantial bandwidth needed for this solution.

Finally, Capital Health is currently spending over $1 billion on three major construction projects, focusing on opening new beds and building a much larger ambulatory environment. Technology will play a substantial role as the region focuses on how to move information and communicate with people in these new environments. For its part, TELUS sees itself helping to support innovative thinking and enabling Capital Health to make the most of any opportunities that arise.

Strating is extremely pleased with the alliance. "It's been a very rewarding relationship because both parties went into it with a series of commitments that had to be met to create a stable working relationship before you start on the visionary stuff. TELUS met their commitments and in some cases exceeded them. They have a tremendous amount of good people internally and a broad breadth of understanding of health care, so we're looking to help bring new ideas of what could work, what is working and what doesn't make sense for the organization."