At the end of April, internal telephone dialing will be converted from the current four-digit dialing system to a five-digit system. “We have to make this change in order to expand the capacity of the hospital’s telephone system,” said Shawn Donahue, corporate manager, Partners Telecommunications, who explained that BWH’s system is now at 9,500 lines and only has the capacity of 10,000.
The project, due to go live on BWH’s main campus on April 27, will also change the internal dialing plan for 850 Boylston Street (live on May 11) and the DFCI/Staples site (live on May 25) to five-digit extension numbers. For example, the phone number of 732-5555 will be dialed internally as ext. 2-5555. In addition, 525-5555 will become ext. 5-5555 and 278-5555 will become ext. 8-5555.
Those internal extensions that are not accessible from outside of the hospital will also be converted to a five-digit extension with a lead digit of 3. For example, the current extension 1234 will become ext. 3-1234.
To prepare for the April conversion, mandatory training will be offered, to which each department is responsible for sending a representative. It is advised that all supervisors take part in the training--30-minute sessions with 25 trainees per session—that will be held April 16 through April 27. Department representatives can begin to sign-up for a training session starting March 16 by contacting Jay Bennett, training coordinator, Partners Telecommunications, at 724-1691 or jbennett2@partners.org
Questions should be directed to Anne Brosnan, project manager, Partners Telecommunications (ext. 7108) or Donahue (726-3344).
*The auto page numbers for BWH and DFCI are changing in preparation for the conversion described above. The BWH Paging System extensions of 333, 6987, 7777 and 7778 will all convert to ext. 5700. The DFCI paging system number of 334 will convert to
617-632-2337. Please make note of these new numbers, as they are effective as of April 2.