The Department of Veteran's Affairs (VA) operates 163 hospitals nation-wide. In early 2005, South Central VA Health Care Network (SCVAHCN)-also known as VISN 16 and one of 21 VA Veterans Integrated Service Neworks or "VISN" around the nation, completed a series of upgrades to their existing paging and radio communications systems. The upgrades were undertaken as part of a $6-1/2 million dollar "Wide-Band to Narrow Band Transition" project. VISN 16 covers all VA Health Care Facilities in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi, as well as parts of South-West Missouri, East and South-East Texas, South Alabama, and West Florida.

David Chagnon is a communications engineer with VISN 16 and served as the project manager in charge of the upgrades at the 10 medical centers and 30 + outpatient clinics that make up VISN 16.

Chagnon explains: "The primary reason why we undertook the project at this time was to become in compliance with the mandated migration to radio equipment, including pagers and pager transmitters, that use a narrow band channel (12.5 kHz) versus the old wide band channel (25 kHz)." Paging:

Even though cellphones are ubiquitous nowadays, for applications such as healthcare, paging still offers numerous advantages including reliability, size of potential coverage area, and overall economy of operation. For these reasons, paging remains an integral part of the communications systems in use at most VA Medical Centers.

"We have over 1,500 pagers at our Little Rock facility," Chagnon says. "For us to issue 1,500 cellphones to replace them just does not make economic sense. Plus, our paging systems tend to be considerably more reliable than public cellular telephone systems. If you have a large-scale emergency in any community (say, for example, snowfall in Seattle), the first thing everybody does is pick up their cellphone and what do they get? No Service. That's a level of reliability I do not find acceptable."

Chagnon goes on to add that paging allows VA Medical Centers to communicate with an individual or group of staff members anywhere within the facility. Moreover, a one-way radio paging system offers a coverage area that often extends 30 to 40 miles around the hospital-perfect for notifying on-call personnel. The most important advantage, however, is reliability. Because cardiac response teams are typically notified by the hospital's paging system, these truly represent mission-critical communications. Some Medical Centers' radio paging systems are also tied in with fire alarm and nurse call systems, and can also be used to issue "missing patient" alerts or other critical building alerts.

Out with the old: In total, Chagnon's Project replaced 9 paging terminals at VA Medical Centers in Houston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Shreveport, Louisiana; Alexandria, Louisiana; Biloxi, Mississippi; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Muskogee, Arkansas; Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

"Some of these are wide-ranging campuses," Chagnon adds. "For example, our North Little Rock facility is a 165 acre campus with 55 buildings. What's more, there are two campuses-Little Rock and North Little Rock-that are literally miles apart."

Many of the VA Medical Centers' paging terminals had been in service for years. At each facility, VSI 16 replaced them with Zetron's Model 2200 Paging Terminals. Because the Little Rock campus sits in a "radio hole" screened by a ridge from the North Little Rock campus, a simulcast system was necessary to ensure continuous coverage between the two campuses which are separated by 2-1/2 air miles. The use of a simulcast system also provides an extra level of redundancy should either system fail.

Police get P25: In addition to switching over the paging system, the existing two-way radio system for VA Police operations at each medical center was also upgraded to a digital P25 radio system. Other new radio systems are used by maintenance staff and emergency response teams.

"Most radio systems utilize Zetron Model 4010s and Model 284 consoles," Chagnon adds. "They're scattered all over the place. Every VA police facility has at least one and sometimes several Model 4010 consoles. We also used a number of Model 284 consoles in locations such as an engineering dispatch."

The Model 4010s are usually located in the VA Police dispatch and are operated by a police dispatcher.

Replacing both the two-way radio and paging systems in one fell swoop was a major undertaking and Chagnon says that the planning part took the best part of a year, with the actual installation (including site preparation construction), taking another year to complete.

Media Contact: Vaughn Entwistle
Phone: 425-820-6363 ext. 636
June, 2005

Redmond, Washington: Zetron, Inc. announces the availability of the Model 2700 Zetron Message Gateway. The Model 2700 employs a Microsoft Windows® operating system with a network of custom software paging applications. This versatile and highly customizable paging terminal has a capacity of up to 1,000,000 subscribers in a single chassis.

Other benefits of the Model 2700 include the ability to support most popular paging formats (including POCSAG and FLEX™ ) and the use of T1, E1, or analog trunks. To maximize continuous service, the Model 2700 features dual, on-line hot-swappable power supplies: if one power supply fails, the system will continue to operate. It also features RAID 1 mirrored, hot-removable System Disk Drives to protect against corrupted data and disk failure, as well as the loss of messages or custom greetings.

Zetron is an established leader in the production of paging terminals, encoders, simulcast paging systems, and associated infrastructure. For more information on the Model 2700 and other paging terminals, contact the Zetron sales department at (425) 820-6363.

Zetron Adds Mapping to its Integrator Suite of Products
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Vaughn Entwistle
Phone: 425-820-6363 ext. 636
March 21, 2005

Redmond, Washington: Zetron, Inc. announces the release of Integrator Map, the newest member of its Integrator Suite family of software products for the public safety industry.

Integrator Map is an automated E9-1-1 call location mapping application which provides the ability to dynamically locate, geographically display and manage incoming E9-1-1 calls. When an emergency call is received, Integrator Map captures and extracts the location information from the E9-1-1 data stream, instantly providing a depiction of the caller’s location by plotting an icon on the PC map. Other advanced features include the ability to answer and release calls from Integrator Map, automatically display wireline and wireless calls, tracking moving wireless callers, and sutomatic faxing, emailing and remote printing of map views to appropriate response agencies.

The Integrator Suite is comprised of Integrator RD (Radio Dispatch), Integrator 9-1-1 (computer telephony), Integrator ACD (Automatic Call Distribution), Integrator MIS (Management Information System), and Integrator IRR (Instant Recall Recorder). With the addition of Integrator Map, the Integrator Suite now provides a complete integrated solution for emergency call taking centers.

For more information on Integrator Map and the entire Integrator Suite line of products, call Zetron sales at 425-820-6363.

For 25 years, Zetron, Inc. has specialized in mission-critical communications. In addition to custom system solutions, Zetron manufactures a wide spectrum of communication solutions including radio dispatch consoles, Integrated Intelligent Work Stations (IIWS), emergency call taking systems, paging infrastructure, trunked radio, wireless SCADA, alarming & telemetry products and much more.