Managed Services for Texas Emergency Center Saves Lives and Dollars

For this Texas emergency center, treating patients and saving lives is mission-critical. It is critical to ensure they are equipped, staffed, and prepared to treat any emergency medical condition that occurs to patients of any age at any time of the day or night. Therefore, their advanced treatment facility - with its full clinical laboratory, pharmacy, radiology department with CT scanner, x-ray and ultrasound equipment, telemetry cardiac monitoring, crash carts, defibrillators, and other emergency medical devices- needed to operate at its prime. Unfortunately, it wasn't. They needed Centre's highly knowledgeable and committed technical team of partners to design an immediate remote solution for this emergency center's most critical problem – access to treat their patients.

emergency center technology challenges 

This emergency center was open for a little under a year and worked hard to build a name that residents in their community could trust. They had exceptional physicians and care staff, a state-of-the-art facility, and efficiently designed operations. Everything was aligned for a solid future with the exception of one critical element – IT. The ER was experiencing severe connectivity issues, a problem that had progressively grown so serious it was risking the integrity of patient care. Given the extensive planning the emergency center had pursued with their medical system vendors, all of their systems were interfaced. The systemic IT connectivity issues would cause one of those systems to drop, which in turn reverberated throughout the entire network.

"The delays were unbelievable. Access to our EMR with 100% uptime 24/7 is an essential function of our ability to assess, document, and store patient information. I’ve never seen such severe downtime and connection issues, yet continued calls to our initial IT vendor resulted in such extensive delays that at one point we even resorted to paper."

Vice President of Operations at Emergency Center

Characteristics of the Problem Included:

• EMR connectivity issues and downtime so severe as to require a backup paper system
• Image transfer limitations that threatened the time-sensitive diagnosis of patients requiring

• Tele-radiology access issues blocking critical resource
• Disruptions in interfaced PACS, lab, and pharmacy systems causing information exchange

• Poorly designed security architecture threatening data or compliance breach
• IT troubleshooting requiring on-site appointment with technician
• Extensive delays in service request response and resolution

Requiring HIPAA-compliant Solutions

The Emergency Center required an IT-rich infrastructure with 24/7 network and inter-network connectivity to access medical programs, operate equipment, and communicate patient data across interfaced systems. Patient treatment was co-dependent on a physician’s ability to access the cloud-based EMR, exchange bi-directional images and results with remote teleradiology, and transfer up-to-the-minute test results across PACS, lab, pharmacy, and other systems. The infrastructure was further complicated by the high volume of rotating PRN (as needed) staff required to run the facility and the essential need for HIPAA-compliant protection of patient data.

fixing emergency infrastructure 

Once same-day access to the Support Desk was set up, Centre partners began troubleshooting 100% of the
company’s IT concerns. Afterwards, they implemented a thoughtful, regimented approach
to permanently resolve the network issues, creating specific strategic and tactical plans prioritized
around the emergency center's needs.

Centre's partners mapped and re-designed the infrastructure requirements, creating systems for automated management and maintenance as well as backup and disaster recovery. They then identified technology risks, created systems that eliminated common reactive issues, standardized processes, and worked with the emergency center's VP of Operations on a long-term plan to ensure consistent, predictable service. Subsequently, Centre partners assessed security risks and created security policies, including employee security awareness training and alert detection systems. Customized programs were installed to handle threats, web and email filtering, virus, malware, and spam protection, data encryption, and automated monthly internal and external vulnerability scans.

Centre partners then planned the emergency center's first quarterly technology business review, where they solidified their strategic plan, set the technology budget, and reviewed critical IT risk management long-term needs.

24x7 emergency technology support

This Texas emergency center engaged Centre partners to reengineer their deficient infrastructure. Centre partners prioritized the creation of a solution for the Emergency Center’s urgent pain point, then gave them immediate access to the Centre partner Support Desk. From that day forward, all emergency center staff had access to the Centre partner IT Support Desk, and they could call one number for any IT-related problem.

“The relief was immediate. On Day 1, they created a remote fix that not only provided us an immediate connectivity solution, but also allowed us to sever ties with our previous vendor the same day.”

Vice President of Operations at Emergency Center

managed it services for emergency centers

Centre's partners successfully designed a proven 24x7 IT Managed Service solution for the emergency center's
mission-critical IT emergency. Their regimented process planning and systems mapping enabled them
to design and deliver a turnkey IT Department solution that managed risk, downtime, and cost.

CRITICAL IMPACT:

"The tech supportteam is extremely knowledgeable; they operate at a higher level that I am used to dealing with from a tech standpoint. When we call...we’re talking to someone who is extremely friendly and willing to dedicate whatever it takes to investigate the problem to get a fix. And they understand healthcare – it’s invaluable for us to be able to speak to a technician who understands the differing requirements of a call from a rad tech versus a call from the ER nurse."

Vice President of Operations at Emergency Center

Centre's partners understanding of healthcare, providing IT Managed Services to over 15 FECs across Texas, gave this emergency center access to technicians who were able to create a customized, strategic infrastructure that not only resolved immediate needs, but optimized a system that will ultimately provide them with a core competency and strategic advantage.