ALLIED HEALTHCARE:

MAINTAINING A HEALTHY DESKTOP

Built on over 30 years of national experience, Allied Healthcare Group (incorporating Allied Staffing Professionals, Nightingale Nursing and Oxycare) is firmly established as one of the UK's leading healthcare staffing agencies.

THE COMPANY

Allied Healthcare Group (AHG) is a flexible, comprehensive staffing company meeting the needs of hospitals, nursing homes, Learning Disability Units, The Prison Service, community care and private patients across 90% of the UK. They are committed to the development of innovative solutions to meet the healthcare community's demanding standards of care, balancing the complex needs of healthcare providers with staff shortages and the flexible working requirements of their staff.

Currently operating with over 100 branches nationwide, AHG is able to combine the strength of a national network with the availability of care workers, qualified nurses, healthcare assistants, support workers and theatre staff from within the local area, providing a vital support service which is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Working from AHG’s head office at Stone in Staffordshire and through its branch network, the business is directed, managed and serviced by a 1,000 strong work force.

HOW ACS HELPS

ACS’s relationship with Allied Healthcare is over 18 years old. The initial contract was for ACS to provide support services for around 10 users of a time recording system. Allied Healthcare has grown considerably since then and so has the service being provided by ACS.

ACS now provides IT hardware, software and network infrastructure to all Allied Healthcare branches in the UK, including Northern Ireland. This covers PCs, servers, printers, LAN and WAN solutions plus software from Microsoft, Novell, Citrix and other suppliers. This entire infrastructure, including the cabling, is implemented and supported on- and off-site by ACS.

There are now over 1,000 Allied Healthcare users spread across the UK being supported by ACS. Support calls are filtered by Allied Healthcare and passed to ACS for resolution. The support service includes remote monitoring of all PCs, servers and the network from ACS’s Telford operations centre.

Alan Brooks of ACS commented, “We have always had a very close relationship with Allied Healthcare and since Generation 9 became part of ACS, we have been able to offer a whole new range of skills and services. We know this will bring further opportunities to strengthen the partnership as their business grows.”

As the Allied Healthcare organisation has grown over the last 18 years, there have been various updates to the IT systems including a number of changes to office locations. ACS provides a full project management service for the relocation of the IT infrastructure for these moves ensuring everything goes smoothly with minimum disruption to users.

Kevin Taylor, ICT Director of Allied Healthcare, said “There are many reasons why we have chosen ACS (Generation 9) to provide our IT support services – principally these include their geographic coverage, the consistency of their service and their understanding of Allied Healthcare’s technology. Equally important factors have been ACS’s flexibility and ability to grow their services to match the growth in our business, especially since the acquisition of Generation 9 by ACS.”

NURSES DIRECT

Nurses Direct was launched in 1994 and became a subsidiary of Allied Healthcare in 2001. They recruit and support temporary nurses of all grades and specialties from 18 sites spread across the south of England. Until 2005, Nurses Direct had been operating independently. However, when assessing the impact of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, 18 branches of Nurses Direct were added to the other 110 already being supported by ACS and on 1st July they were re-branded under the umbrella of Allied Healthcare Group.

“With regard to Nurses Direct, we had no hesitation in extending the coverage of the contract - it was definitely a question of ‘when’ as opposed to ‘if’” commented Kevin Taylor.