BellSouth Connects Baptist Health Facilities With 600-Mile Fiber Ring

ATLANTA, May 18 /PRNewswire/ -- BellSouth today announced that it is providing 600 miles of fiber infrastructure to link Baptist Health's medical facilities in a five-county area of Northeast Florida and South Georgia.

The network implementation is part of the health care system's strategy of investing in technology to help ensure excellent patient care. Many of Baptist Health's locations rely on new medical technologies such as PACS (digital medical imaging which replaces old film x-ray or radiology technologies), clinical information systems and automated point of care, patient access and administrative systems. These and other similar technology investments result in faster diagnoses and improved resource utilization, all while maximizing the assurance of appropriate patient care. BellSouth's solution allows various locations to share information via voice, data, LAN and video transport and gives employees ubiquitous access to the new medical tools centralized on servers at key locations.

"High availability, reliability and affordability were key criteria for any network connections between our five hospitals, primary care centers and specialty facilities," said Dave Dully, director of technology - Baptist Health. "We require redundant systems and high bandwidth built on a secure infrastructure with lots of flexibility and scalability."

The solution includes a fiber ring with diverse paths to all of the customer's hospital locations. The self-healing fiber ring, known as BellSouth(R) SMARTRing(R) Service, is engineered with MSPP (Multi-Service Provisioning Platform) features. MSPP provides standards-based, carrier class transport capabilities to the health care system and delivers enhanced network flexibility. For example, if Baptist Health has the future need to share Ethernet traffic from its primary care facilities and other smaller, remote site locations over the fiber ring that supports the hospitals, MSPP allows the integration of protocols.

"Health care providers can not afford the risk of communication outages. Their entire operation is mission critical," said Rusty Rhodes, vice president of sales for North Florida - BellSouth Business. "Between the hurricanes in Florida last year and fiber cuts due to construction in some of the high growth areas surrounding Baptist Health's locations, SMARTRing technology has proven its ability to deliver continuous service."

By incorporating the new technologies into the access network for Baptist Health, BellSouth designed a solution built for future upgrades to be implemented "in-service," meaning it is not taken "down" or out of service to turn up new bandwidth in the future. This alleviated a major concern for the hospital's patient care consideration. Additionally, Baptist Health will have options in the future should it decide to add its existing Metro Ethernet traffic to the fiber ring.

BellSouth worked closely with Baptist Health's IT staff to ensure a smooth transition to the new service. The team conducted detailed site surveys, held training sessions for the Baptist Health users and provided demonstration equipment prior to deployment of the SMARTRing MSPP solution. As a result, the Baptist Health management approached the critical live cutover date with confidence.

"BellSouth was concerned with every detail of the process, every step of the way," continued Dully. "Careful planning resulted in a seamless migration, without disruption to the medical facilities' operations."

Over the last three years, BellSouth has evolved its underlying SONET infrastructure to a next-generation MSPP (Multi-service Provisioning Platform) to improve network efficiencies and to better support new optical solutions.

For more information about BellSouth Business voice and data solutions, visit http://www.bellsouthlargebusiness.com/ .

About Baptist Health of Jacksonville, FL

Baptist Health is a faith-based, mission-driven system comprised of Baptist Medical Center, Baptist Medical Center Beaches, Baptist Medical Center Nassau, Baptist Medical Center South and Wolfson Children's Hospital - Jacksonville's only children's hospital. Baptist Health also includes cardiology and cardiovascular surgery services, a comprehensive cancer center, orthopaedic institute, women's resource center, a full range of psychology and psychiatry services, outpatient facilities and a network of primary care physicians' offices throughout Northeast Florida.

About BellSouth Corporation

BellSouth Corporation is a Fortune 100 communications company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth has joint control and 40 percent ownership of Cingular Wireless, the nation's largest wireless voice and data provider with more than 50 million customers.

Backed by award winning customer service, BellSouth offers the most comprehensive and innovative package of voice and data services available in the market. Through BellSouth Answers(R), residential and small business customers can bundle their local and long distance service with dial-up and high-speed DSL Internet access, satellite television and Cingular(R) Wireless service. For businesses, BellSouth provides secure, reliable local and long distance voice and data networking solutions. BellSouth also offers online and directory advertising through BellSouth(R) RealPages.com(R) and The Real Yellow Pages(R).

BellSouth believes that diversity and fostering an inclusive environment are critical in maintaining a competitive advantage in today's global marketplace. More information about BellSouth can be found at http://www.bellsouth.com/ .