SRP Telecom: Helping create a ‘carrier-grade’
PRIVATE HEALTH CARE NETWORK
Background
SRP Telecom is a carrier-neutral provider of telecommunications infrastructure products and services to wireline and
wireless carriers, as well as to enterprise customers. It is part of Salt River Project (SRP), one of the nation’s largest
public-power utilities. Because its fiber generally parallels the utility’s electric system, and fiber-optic and cell-site
assets are concentrated in metropolitan Phoenix, SRP Telecom has ready access to a geographically large market.
And as a fiber network designed to support mission-critical electric and water systems, it is a highly reliable network.
Business challenge: Banner Health’s INADEQUATE network
When a cutting-edge provider of health services, Banner Health, needed bandwidth and functionality, SRP Telecom
was there to help by supporting its strategic plan calling for a new level of clinical innovation that would enable
Banner to deploy optical services over a physically separate and survivable metropolitan fiber-optic infrastructure.
Banner Health is one of the nation’s largest nonprofit hospital systems. Based in Phoenix, Banner has 23 hospitals
and health care facilities in seven Western states.
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About eight years ago, Banner’s information network
infrastructure was depleted and unable to handle the new
facilities scheduled to come online. For a health care
provider that wanted to attain industry leadership through
clinical excellence, it was an intolerable situation.
Banner Health hospitals in Arizona at that time were
adopting picture archiving and communications systems,
Voice over Internet Protocol technology, wireless networking,
video-based telemedicine, and new electronic medical
record systems. These solutions allowed clinicians to
more easily share real-time patient data (including highresolution images), access comprehensive information
and applications at the bedside, and deliver care more
efficiently. Banner’s challenge was to find a way to deliver
these applications efficiently to minimize costs.
Rather than deploying separate solutions at each hospital,
Banner sought to build a single, centralized system that
could deliver voice, video and data services to any
facility on the network. In addition to the cost advantages,
centralizing these processes could create a more resilient
network infrastructure — one that would allow Banner to
add new services in the future.
Banner not only needed a new system, but also one with
considerably more bandwidth. Bandwidth is critical; it
determines how many applications and customers can be
supported simultaneously.
Solution
Through a partnership with SRP Telecom, SBC and Cisco
Systems, Banner Health was able to create a “carrier-grade”
information network that offers 50 times the capacity of its
former system and meets some of the highest availability
and fault recovery standards in the industry — a major
consideration when patients’ lives are on the line. The new
network easily connects Banner’s seven health care facilities
and one data center in metropolitan Phoenix.
B a n n e r H e a l th O n e
o f N at i o n ’ s L a r g e st
Banner Health is one of the nation’s
largest nonprofit hospital systems. Based
in Phoenix, Banner has more than
36,000 employees at 23 hospitals and
health care facilities in seven states:
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado,
Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming.
Additionally, Banner provides more than
$110 million a year in charity care.
Nationally recognized for its patientsafety efforts, Banner Health has
been honored as one of the top 10
health systems in the United States.
The recognition is based on clinical
performance according to Thomson
Reuters, a leading provider of information
and solutions to improve the cost and
quality of health care. Banner also was
named one of the top 10 integrated
health networks, according to SDI and
Modern Healthcare magazine.
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SRP Telecom fiber generally parallels SRP’s 2,900-square-mile electric service territory, which spans all or part of
15 cities in three counties — reaching almost every corner of the Valley. This means Banner can easily expand its
network to new facilities.
Banner now is powered by a network that offers 26 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwidth at 1 millisecond of
latency. The previous network tapped out at 257 megabits per second and could support only three facilities.
In addition to the flexibility and scalability of Ethernet and Wavelength services, available at data rates from 1 to
40 Gbps, SRP Telecom offers the distinction of physical layer diversity over its unique, geographically pervasive,
1,600-route-mile dark fiber network.
The new network has performed at critical levels of reliability, operating at an availability of 99.99999%. That
translates to just 3.15 seconds of downtime for an entire year. The industry standard is 5 minutes, 15 seconds
per year.
In terms of human life, this means there now is a risk factor of only 1 in 16,600 with the upgrade during a “seven
nines” outage, an improvement from a risk factor of 1 in 166 during a “five nines” outage, when considering the
new network’s ability to avoid patient mortality.
S R P : T h e str e n g th o f a pr e m i e r br a n d
SRP has been essential to the growth and economic development of central Arizona since before statehood.
Based in Tempe, Ariz., SRP was established in 1903 as the nation’s first power and water federal
reclamation project.
SRP now ranks among the nation’s largest public-power utilities, serving about 1 million electric customers
in central Arizona. Additionally, SRP oversees a 250,000-acre water service area and is one of the largest
raw-water suppliers in metropolitan Phoenix. SRP is rated AA by Standard & Poor’s and has earned multiple
awards from J.D. Power and Associates for providing exceptional service to commercial and residential
electric customers.
More recently, SRP was named one of 50 J.D. Power 2012 Customer Service Champions. Brands that receive
the designation are among the top 5% of more than 800 evaluated brands. Customer Service Champions not
only excel within their respective industries, but also stand out when evaluated across multiple industries.
SRP was also selected by E Source, in partnership with the Nielsen Co., as the top utility in its national Utility
Brand Strength Study. The evaluation was based on a broad survey of U.S. residential electric utility customers,
assessing nine brand attributes.
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“The SRP Telecom network has been a plus for Banner Health, which uses it to connect nearly all of its Phoenixmetropolitan-based hospitals and provide access to electronic medical records and digital services,” said James
Pflugfelder, Director of Network and Communications at Banner. “It allows us to just say yes when we have new
facilities and upgraded technological needs.” As a result of the partnership, a number of state-of-the-art, lifesaving
systems, applications and programs were enabled:
• Cerner Millennium, a single, comprehensive medical record system, incorporates all patient care
information into one database that can be accessed securely from anywhere. It also creates a real-time
digital chart and provides decision-support tools from physicians and nurses.
• The iCare Network is one of the country’s largest telehealth systems used for critical care. Electronic
intensive-care units, or eICUs, use telehealth technology to connect remote doctors with critically ill
patients. Banner’s iCare system connects physicians and nurses from remote locations to about 15
hospitals and 450 beds in three states and transmits critical patient information, such as heart and
breathing rates. Banner officials estimate that the iCare system has helped prevent more than 1,000
deaths in the past year alone by providing access to critical-care specialists.
• The Banner Simulation Medical Center is a virtual hospital used to train doctors and nurses. It’s one of
the largest centers of its kind in the world and includes an intensive care unit, an emergency department,
two operating rooms, a neonatal care center and an eight-bed recovery room. Computerized
mannequins serve as patients on which medical staff can hone their skills before treating people.
The facility has the capacity to train upward of 1,900 nurses, tripling the previous number of nursing
candidates trained.
Banner Health now has the bandwidth, resiliency and network performance to evolve to the next level of patient care. The
organization can deploy virtually any application or service that will improve clinicians’ ability to care for patients. Banner
realized its goal of operating in an area of bandwidth and functionality out of reach for most health care providers.
Contact us
SRP has been an engine for economic development in central Arizona for more than a century. To learn more about
how SRP Telecom can help build your legacy, contact:
• Wireline services
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (602) 236-8777
Web: srptelecom.com
• Wireless services
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (602) 236-8779
Web: srptelecom.com
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