How Hospitals Eliminate Coverage Gaps to Improve Patient Care and Streamline Operations

Healthcare organizations depend on reliable communications to support patient care, care team coordination and day-to-day clinical operations. When coverage gaps disrupt communication inside a hospital, staff collaboration slows, patient experiences suffer and operational risk increases. 

Large healthcare campuses, specialized construction and building materials and complex facility layouts often make reliable indoor cellular coverage difficult to achieve campus-wide. 

A Distributed Antenna System (DAS) helps eliminate these challenges by extending cellular service throughout healthcare facilities for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. 

How do hospitals eliminate coverage gaps? 

Hospitals can use Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) to extend cellular coverage into areas where outdoor signals are challenging to reach. Properly designed indoor DAS helps support reliable connectivity throughout healthcare facilities for patients, visitors and staff.  

Why do hospitals experience cellular coverage gaps?   

Many hospitals are built with dense concrete, steel and specialized construction materials that can interfere with outdoor cellular signals. This, combined with large building footprints and complex clinical environments, such as imaging departments and treatment areas, are factors that can create indoor cellular coverage gaps throughout a healthcare campus. 

Why are cellular coverage gaps a healthcare risk? 

When staff encounter coverage gaps, the patient experience is impacted. Modern care runs on mobile: clinicians increasingly rely on secure mobile communications, secure messaging platforms and connected applications to coordinate care. 

Healthcare organizations are increasingly focused on reducing operational risk, supporting staff collaboration and maintaining communication systems that help care teams stay connected wherever they work.  

A properly designed DAS provides the infrastructure that supports communication continuity across the facility. 

Do hospitals over 200,000 square feet need a DAS? 

As hospitals increase in size, patient volume and complexity, maintaining reliable cellular coverage throughout the facility can become more challenging. Reliable cellular coverage in hospitals 200,000 square feet and above can especially run into this challenge, as the large property size means outside signals need to penetrate even further into every corner of the building.  

A Distributed Antenna System (DAS) helps extend cellular coverage throughout the hospital, supporting more consistent connectivity for clinicians, staff, patients and visitors. 

Who benefits from improved hospital connectivity? 

Patients and Visitors 

Patients and visitors expect reliable coverage for communications, healthcare information and mobile applications. Consistent cellular coverage allows patients to stay connected with family members, caregivers and support networks throughout their healthcare experience. 

Clinical Staff 

Physicians, nurses and support teams rely on mobile connectivity to coordinate care and collaborate across departments. 

Reliable connectivity helps support: 

• Care team communication 

• Mobile clinical workflows 

• Secure messaging applications 

• Access to healthcare information 

• Coordination across large healthcare campuses 

Reliable coverage helps clinicians focus on patient care instead of searching for a stronger cellular signal.

How does connectivity support healthcare digital transformation? 

Healthcare organizations are modernizing patient experiences and clinical operations through digital initiatives, mobile applications and connected technologies. 

To support these initiatives, healthcare facilities need infrastructure capable of delivering highly secure and consistent connectivity throughout the campus. 

A hospital DAS acts as a strategic enabler of healthcare transformation, keeping care teams connected across every floor, patient room and department, while supporting clinical work, patient and family experiences.  

Why are healthcare organizations adopting Network as a Service (NaaS)? 

Healthcare IT teams often face growing connectivity demands while balancing cybersecurity initiatives, clinical applications, compliance requirements and infrastructure modernization projects. 

Boingo’s Network as a Service (NaaS) approach provides a path for modernizing wireless infrastructure. Rather than managing carrier coordination, maintenance and day-to-day operations internally, healthcare organizations can leverage a managed model supported by ongoing monitoring and operational expertise, while offloading the long-term risk of hardware obsolescence, wireless lifecycle shifts and costly future upgrades.   

This approach can help reduce operational complexity while allowing internal teams to focus on strategic initiatives that directly support patient care and organizational goals.

Benefits of distributed antenna systems in hospitals 

A properly designed DAS can help healthcare organizations: 

Improve healthcare connectivity with Boingo 

Reliable connectivity can help healthcare organizations support communication, collaboration and digital transformation across the facility, while improving patient experience.  

Cellular coverage gaps can create unnecessary communication challenges across healthcare facilities. A properly designed DAS helps support care team coordination, patient experiences and day-to-day clinical operations.