Built in 1933, Lima Memorial Hospital is an 8-story, 300-bed facility that serves a 10-county area in western Ohio. With 1400 staff and 350 physicians, the hospital provides a full range of services including a Level II Trauma Center, cutting-edge cardiovascular procedures, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, a Women’s Health Center, and state-ofthe- art cancer care. | rGENCY In-Building is Just What Doctors Ordered Lima Memorial CASE STUDY CHALLENGE Built in 1933 Lima Memorial Hospital is an 8-story 300-bed facility that serves a 10-county area in western Ohio. With 1400 staff and 350 physicians the hospital provides a full range of services including a Level II Trauma Center cutting-edge cardiovascular procedures hyperbaric oxygen chambers a Women s Health Center and state-of-the-art cancer care. With a mission to continually improve its community s quality of life Lima Memorial was the first facility in its area to provide comprehensive emergency services and its quality of service depends on fast and reliable communications. Doctors and maintenance staff have relied on wireless pagers and an overhead audio paging system for many years but by 2004 the medical staff had begun pushing for cellular phones as a more flexible and inclusive communications device. With help from the InterReach Unison system Lima Memorial was able to deliver on their request. CASE STUDY OF TOWERS AND TELEMETRY Hospitals present unusual challenges for cellular coverage. Hospital buildings use steel and concrete construction which tends to block or reduce the strength of cellular signals coming from outdoor cellular towers and base stations. And the environment in a hospital is generally very dense meaning that there are a lot of small rooms with walls that can block a wireless signal and lots of equipment which can also cause wireless propagation issues. While doctors and staff reported getting reasonably strong coverage in patient rooms on Lima Memorial s upper floors coverage worsened for users on lower floors or deeper inside buildings. Another problem was the risk of cellular calls interfering with wireless medical telemetry equipment such as wireless EKG monitors on patients. When cellular signals are weaker users handsets must boost their own transmit receive power making it more likely that a call might interfere with transmissions from nearby .
