Case Study: Pacific Medical Centers achieves scalable, secure, cost-effective EMR-ready network with XO Communications Ethernet VPLS

Pacific Medical Centers Enhances Network Capacity for Secure Transmission of Patient Records with XO Ethernet VPLS

Pacific Medical Centers, a not‑for‑profit network of 10 outpatient clinics in the Seattle area with 140 providers, needed a cost‑effective, high‑bandwidth, and secure network to replace aging T1/T3/DS3 circuits and to support an upcoming enterprise Electronic Medical Records (EMR) rollout. After a seven‑year relationship with XO Communications, Pacific Medical Centers selected XO Ethernet VPLS to avoid sending sensitive patient data over the public Internet and to provide scalable bandwidth for growing, mission‑critical applications.

XO Communications deployed XO Ethernet VPLS at five clinics in late 2010, delivering 10 Mbps per location and completing the rollout within two weeks; T3/DS3 circuits were turned off after testing. The move reduced network costs versus T3/DS3, enabled purchase of smaller, less expensive routers (replacing Cisco 3800s), and gave Pacific Medical Centers a scalable, private WAN ready to support full EMR deployment in 2011–2012.

Pacific Medical Centers

Carl Ballard

Senior Network Engineer