Communications workflows mapped, tested, and ready before day one for a new care facility.

An acute care facility faced a fixed, immovable opening date and a communications cutover where a misrouted call is a patient-care risk, not an inconvenience. Charter ran it as a workflow readiness program rather than a phone migration, mapping and testing every call flow across reception, switchboard, clinical, and administrative teams. The facility opened on schedule with communications that worked from the first hour.

At a glance
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• Departments and user groups transitioned to one environment
• Dall flows mapped, documented, and tested before go-live
• Users prepared, with focused training for complex call-handling roles
• Opened on the fixed date with communications working at go-live

Business challenge

‍A healthcare organization preparing to open a new acute care facility needed to move alarge and diverse group of users to a new telephone environment. Reception teams,switchboard operators, clinical departments, and administrative groups each relied ondistinct communication workflows, and those requirements had to be understood,documented, configured, and tested before the facility opened.

The organization had to bring many departments into a common communications environment without overlooking the different ways each received, routed, transferred, and escalated calls.

A fixed opening date left little room for uncertainty. Incomplete requirements, incorrectrouting, or unprepared users could create confusion during a sensitive opening anddisrupt the communications that support care delivery.

What Charter delivered

‍Charter structured the engagement as a workflow readiness program, not a telephone system migration.

The team worked with clinical and operational stakeholders to understand howcommunications move through the organization in practice, translating that intodocumented call flows, planning materials, test scenarios, and targeted userpreparation. This grounded the future-state design in real operations and gave theorganization a structured way to validate the new environment before go-live.
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• Phase 1: Requirements and workflow discovery: Charter engaged reception, switch board, clinical, administrative, and departmental stakeholders to understand needs, routing requirements, escalation paths, and specialized call-handling responsibilities.
• Phase 2: Call-flow documentation: the team mapped communication workflows acrossdepartments, so routing logic and operational requirements could be reviewed beforeconfiguration and cutover.
• Phase 3: Reusable planning and testing documentation: Charter developed practicalplanning materials and test plans for key scenarios, helping the organization validatehow the new environment would perform against real use cases.
• Phase 4: Deployment coordination and targeted training: the team supported deploymentplanning, stakeholder coordination, and focused preparation for users with more complexcall-handling responsibilities.

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Outcomes
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• Delivered on time. A fixed opening date held, with communications operational from the first hour rather than stabilized in the days after.
• Cutover risk reduced before go-live.
• Workflows built on real operations. The environment reflected how reception,switchboard, clinical, and administrative teams actually handle calls, not an assumed design.
• Users ready on day one. Teams with complex call-handling responsibilities receivedfocused preparation, so communication continuity held through go-live.
• A repeatable foundation. The planning, call-flow, and testing materials support futurefacility openings, departmental migrations, and communication changes.

Capabilities engaged
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• Project Services: the four-phase readiness program, deployment coordination, andtargeted training. Delivery Management, Rollout & Adoption.
• Consulting & Business Architecture: requirements and call-flow discovery acrossdepartments. Design-Thinking.

Charter treated the cutover as a delivery and adoption program, not a phone install,which is why users were ready and the opening held.

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FAQ

How do you reduce risk when moving a hospital to a new phone system?

‍Treat it as a workflow readiness program, not a migration. Charter mapped and testedevery call flow across all departments before go-live, so the facility opened on timewith communications working from the first hour.

Why do communications matter so much for a care facility opening?

‍In an acute care setting, a misrouted or dropped call can affect patient care. Gettingrouting, escalation, and user readiness right before opening protects care delivery fromday one.