Medical Office: Are You Frustrated with Slow Network Speeds Impacting Patient Experience?
You’re a medical office, you can’t wait around for your network to improve in order to service clients properly. You shouldn’t be expected to transfer files, maintain HIPAA considerations, and keep a high level of patient facing service with poor connectivity. Unfortunately, you need to fix these problems quickly, so you don’t have negative impacts on your patients or the business. We can help you fix fiber internet issues. Below let’s talk about this concept for Medical offices.
Connectivity problems are way more common than you might think – and even a single incident that lasts more than a few hours can wreak havoc on an otherwise smoothly operating medical office.
This is particularly true for large internal file transfers that other workflows require or video footage, which can cause a major bottleneck. E.g. X-rays or other imaging/video being slowed down on the network which causes a backup for doctors that need to review them.
Here are some examples of how this immediately and drastically impacts your office workflow:
- A periodontist works in your dental office once a week, but today the network is down – now you’ve got to cancel appointments and reschedule, and you’ve got a very unhappy periodontist, and patients.
- You need to view real-time video footage, but you cannot transfer files quickly because there is latency in the network – you are spending expensive hours as a medical practitioner waiting around.
- You need to do virtual consults and have existing patients scheduled – but you cannot reliably connect with enough bandwidth to properly conduct those consultations – you are losing the most important new revenue channel for your practice.
The list goes on and on, regarding what could go wrong if you’re a medical office without the right network design and implementation.
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Here are some reasons that your network might be experiencing problems intermittently, or major problems in general in a medical office setting
The wrong fiber cable was installed causing major network issues
Here’s a scenario we’ve encountered before: This medical office consists of three separate buildings in the same complex, after spending thousands of dollars on digging up the parking lot to run conduit, running fiber cable, and repaving the trench the office still experienced poor network performance.The single unprotected fiber cable that was ran, was very long multimode fiber patch cable in conduit, which connected to incorrect SFPs in the MDF and IDF. These fiber patch cables are meant for internal fiber patching within a network rack. To top it off, there was no redundancy installed, so scalability was not an option unless a new fiber cable was installed.
Future proofing your network infrastructure allows for efficient planning
With this medical practitioner looking to take over the lease for a fourth building in the complex they were looking for scalability and answers to get their network up to speed.
After consulting with UFO, a simple, easy to understand plan was implemented. We successfully installed three new 12 strand single-mode fiber optic cabling between sites creating a hub and spoke network design by having all those fiber cables make their way from the MDF to each IDF. In this case, we fusion spliced all fibers in new distribution panels, labeled the panels for each site and tested every single strand with passing results. We reconnected all of network equipment and ensured proper connectivity and remote access.
Every project has different needs, and that is why it’s so important to have the right professionals doing the diagnosis – so you get it fixed quickly, and without a lot of repeat visits. You want to be back to high throughput as soon as possible, and minimize the chance of having the same problem in the future. We do that. We are those professionals that can significantly streamline your time to get back to proper connectivity.
Scheduling network maintenance servicing to have the least amount of downtime
Working with a professional low voltage company allows for flexibility of scheduling. Low voltage work should not impact your customers, and for medical offices which are primarily open during the day, we offer weekend and overnight work options. For the above mentioned medical office, we were able to install the fiber optic cables on the weekend and minimize downtime.
Network consulting to solve network connectivity issues
During the installation process, the UFO team noticed major network configuration issues which contributed to the poor network health. Unfortunately, sometimes the MSP or IT consulting company doesn’t recognize that these problems are impacting as improper monitoring is set up and neglect to the network starts to snowball . By detecting network loops, improper SFPs, fiber cabling mismatches, cabling damage, and VLAN misconfigurations that impacted business operations greatly, we were able to offer new solutions. Being proactive and eliminating the possibility of network issues will result in happier end users and a better experience.
The ultimate goal is the bottom line. A proper network and IT operations will enhance the workflow timeline for the most crucial segments of your staff translates directly to bottom-line benefits. By refining the user experience for medical professionals within your team, you amplify the overall efficiency and utilization of the resources allocated.
When these things are running smoothly, you can take on more patients,and take care of them better. You minimize the bad reviews, as well as the headaches that make staff and patients upset.
Overall, a well-designed, highly available network improves every stakeholder’s experience in real-time and over the long-term. It leads to better patient interactions, and better profitability.