MASS Communications has rolled out an MPLS voice and data network solution for CityMD, a fast-growing New York-based network of urgent care centers.
The multiyear IP-based networking contract will bolster CityMD’s ability to manage its rapid growth plans. The infrastructure also will ensure the continual uptime that’s crucial to serving patients with minimal wait times and providing aftercare services.
Over the last four and-a-half years, CityMD has grown from one office to 40 – primarily in New York City and Long Island. The healthcare provider plans to expand to as many as 70 locations in the next two years. To accommodate that growth, CityMD needed a much more robust networking environment than its previous low-cost hosted solution, which wasn’t scalable or reliable. It lacked dedicated voice services, which led to costly service outages.
“MASS Communications is helping us bring reliable Ethernet circuits to ensure we have connectivity around the clock,” says Robert Florescu, VP of IT for CityMD. “One of the benefits of our partnership with MASS Communications is their negotiation power with telecom carriers and their service model to provide ongoing monitoring and support,” he adds.
The fully meshed MPLS and IP-based solution gives every CityMD location an Ethernet primary with a secondary diverse broadband connection for failover and redundancy. Each location will connect to two geographically diverse routed core data center gateways for a fully managed SIP voice solution. For location-based emergency services, traditional POTS lines have also been deployed at each location.
“We acted as a partner and consultant to help source the new voice platform and manage all aspects of the implementation,” said Marc Gold, president and COO at MASS Communications. “The quality of the service needed to be flawless as this client delivers emergency and health-based services to their customers.”
In designing a new hardware voice solution, MASS Communications had to consult in the selection of a vendor to replace all the existing handsets since the pre-existing hosted phone equipment was not compatible with any of the dedicated hardware solutions. Keeping costs down without sacrificing performance was a key challenge.
“MASS‘s negotiation skills and resources not only ensured we got the best pricing with our current deployment but it also will help us keep our competitive pricing model as we expand into other markets,” said Florescu.
