COVID-19 has put healthcare organizations in a crisis all their own. As the pandemic drags on and digital interactions become the norm, strained healthcare systems are expected to keep educating communities and protecting patients and staff amidst constantly changing health policies and work procedures. Catapulted into digital transformation, IT leaders in the healthcare industry have no choice but to navigate the challenges of remote care to continue supporting their organization’s life-saving work:
As the number of cases and casualties continues to climb, it’s crucial that healthcare organizations work smart to improve patient and employee safety, value, and overall quality of care – all while maintaining cost efficiency, data security, and patient privacy.
The way patients access care and how and where organizations deliver that care have fundamentally shifted in 2020 and will continue to change in the years ahead. Unified Communications – specifically, cloud-based UC – is at the heart of this change. New research shows that Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) is experiencing its fastest growth ever in the midst of COVID-19, with healthcare and medical companies reporting the highest growth rates.
UCaaS enables healthcare organizations to deliver superior care by reliably connecting every element in their healthcare ecosystems, no matter where patients or practitioners are located:
Looking at the changes happening in healthcare and how organizations are reshaping themselves, it’s clear that UCaaS is crucial for the future of patient care. But UCaaS alone isn’t enough. Just as important is a security-first network – specifically, a Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN). SD-WAN strengthens UCaaS application performance and delivers agility, flexibility, security, and AI-powered automation to create the kind of patient, employee, and business outcomes needed in today’s new norm. It’s for this reason 93% of companies are bundling UCaaS with network security services. Doing so supports cloud healthcare communications with high performance, global availability, and the simplicity of built-in security features in one cloud service with one management portal for both UC and the network. This reduces the complexity of healthcare digital transformation by addressing UC, the network, and security in one unified strategy.
The benefits of bundling UCaaS and secure SD-WAN for healthcare are huge:
Masergy has been working alongside many healthcare providers to navigate this new normal and ensure the continuity of secure healthcare services in 2020. Most recently, we helped a non-profit, rural area healthcare provider treat more patients with higher network reliability and 5x more bandwidth – all while reducing outages and cutting IT costs. Before the pandemic, telemedicine supported an estimated 10-20% of the provider’s doctor visits. Now, the healthcare provider is steady at approximately 50%. During the spikes in telemedicine usage, their IT director described Masergy’s SD-WAN and network service as key, saying “it never even hiccupped.”
There’s a reason over 60% of companies who are satisfied with their UCaaS deployments are also using SD-WAN. Purchasing UCaaS and SD-WAN from the right managed network services provider gives essential workers the equally essential tools and the reliable support they need to save lives.
From us at Masergy, we sincerely thank every healthcare worker for all they have done and continue to do.
Learn more about Masergy UCaaS with SD-WAN.
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