JERSEY CITY, NJ – Horizon Health Center, which provides healthcare services to 19,000 patients and handles more than 72,000 outpatient visits a year, has overhauled its network to improve care and cut costs.

To replace its legacy telecommunications networks, Horizon tapped Optimum Lightpath, which bills itself as a leader in Ethernet-based data, Internet, voice, video transport solutions and managed services. The company claims work with 70 percent of hospitals and hospital systems based in the New York metro area.

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Horizon Health Center operates three facilities throughout Hudson County, offering a broad range of services and programs. Its patient visits had grown from 58,000 to 72,000 annually, supported by more than 150 employees and 20 physicians. As demand for its services increased, Horizon Health Center executives saw that their legacy, copper-based network from Verizon wasn't providing the support required for physicians and staff to work smoothly and efficiently to provide top care.

"Our network was extremely slow, dropping calls, had difficulty remaining stable and was becoming very complex to manage," said Arlene Simon, chief information officer of Horizon Health Center. "It was not an option to let our spotty telecommunication services continue to negatively impact our ability to serve patients. A change had to be made."

Horizon Health Center consolidated all its voice and data services, boosting its bandwidth from 5 mbps to 100 mbps – a 20-fold increase. The upgrade to the faster, more reliable, 100 percent fiber network and Optimum Lightpath's Hosted Voice resulted in cost savings and full cost predictability due to simple, flat rate pricing. Following the upgrade, Horizon Health Center could access and move data in real-time, easily communicate across its three facilities, simply manage changes to its voice system via a Web-based control panel, and more quickly share information with health information exchange sites.

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“The difference isn't just about drastically improved reliability, customer service and cost savings,” said Simon. “Optimum Lightpath is empowering us with functionality and control, so today we feel like we can do anything. That feeling of network freedom lets us think big as we work tirelessly to deliver an ever-better patient experience."

Next for Horizon Health Center? Simon said the center is ready to leverage the scalability of its network to deploy new online video consultation functionality, improve access capability for other healthcare partner organizations, increase ability to share patient lab results, images and information, and use its website in new ways to deliver convenient care for patients.