Case Study: CoxHealth achieves four‑nines network reliability and 20× faster PACS imaging with Brocade network solutions

CoxHealth Makes Outstanding Patient Care Easier to Deliver

CoxHealth, a not-for-profit health system serving 24 counties with five hospitals and 83 clinics, faced an aging, flat Layer 2 network that caused weekly outages and hampered clinical workflows as it moved toward a single electronic health record and continuous patient care. Slow PACS performance (CT images taking ~40 seconds, with peaks up to 4 minutes) and unreliable connectivity threatened clinicians’ ability to access patient information where and when needed.

CoxHealth implemented an end-to-end Brocade solution — MLX routers for carrier-class core routing, ICX 7750/7450/6610 switches for aggregation and access, DCX SAN backbones, NetIron CES, VDX in test, and Brocade Network Advisor — and integrated its Cisco wireless for a consistent user experience. The upgrade raised availability from frequent downtime to “four nines” reliability, cut PACS image loading from 40 seconds to about 2 seconds, eliminated unplanned outages (even enabling an uninterrupted ER move), and delivered a scalable network foundation for the next decade.

CoxHealth

Dan Brewer

Senior Manager for IT