Business challenge For over-stretched hospital staff, every extra minute at a patient’s bedside counts towards quality care. Henry Mayo wanted to reduce the time they spent accessing electronic health records (EHRs).
Transformation
Henry Mayo became an early adopter of the latest release of MEDITECH’s EHR solution, and partnered with Key Information Systems to deploy VersaStack from IBM and Cisco to run the new software.
Business benefits
Boosts
Staff productivity by reducing response times, to help meet growing demand for care
Primes
Henry Mayo for the future, with easy scaling options and rapid provisioning
Optimizes
Infrastructure management for new capabilities with no additional headcount
Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital (Henry Mayo) is a 238-bed, not-for-profit community hospital and trauma canter in Valencia, California. Established in 1975, the hospital has a medical staff of over 500 and employs more than 2,200 people. It provides a wide range of healthcare services, including highly respected programs for maternity, cancer treatment, stroke and cardiology care, and a wide range of inpatient and outpatient surgical services.
“VersaStack and MEDITECH solutions will help our physicians spend more time where they are most needed: at the patient’s bedside.” Cindy Peterson, CIO and VP, Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.
Making the most of limited resources
Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital (Henry Mayo) is, literally, a lifeline to the com-munity that it serves. With demand outstripping hospital capacity, the organization continually looks for new ways to maximize use of resources.
Cindy Peterson, CIO and VP at Henry Mayo, explains: “Each year, over 65,000 patients are admitted to our emergency department, which is only designed to accommodate 56,000 visits, illustrating just how over- stretched we are.
To deliver the best quality care we can, we are always striving to help our physicians work more efficiently. Perhaps the most effective tool we have at hand is technology, which has the power to transform the hospital.”
Leading the way
A long time user of MEDITECH solutions, Henry Mayo seized the opportunity to become an early adopter of the latest release of the software.“We jumped at the chance to become the first hospital to deploy MEDITECH 6.15,” says Peterson.
“It offers us a host of new capabilities, including greater integration between classic modules and new web- based applications that our care- givers can access anytime, anywhere.”
To proceed, the hospital needed to choose the right platform to run the new release, taking into account a range of essential factors.
“The choice of infrastructure was crucial,” comments Peterson. “From the moment a patient arrives and right through their aftercare, our staff view and update their records, so delays or interruptions to service directly affect care. As a result, we needed high-performance infrastructure that would enable us to utilize our new capabilities to their full potential.
“Equally, we were looking for a very secure solution, since the sensitive medical information we hold must be protected from cyber threats. Finally, as a not-f or- profit organization, we must keep one eye on the bottom line at all times, so the platform we selected also needed to offer competitive TCO and a low burden of management.”
Groundbreaking performance, revolutionary simplicity
Henry Mayo looked to long-term collaborator and IBM Premier Business Partner Key Information Systems for advice. On its partner’s recommendation, and following a thorough review of the technology, Henry Mayo selected VersaStack, a pre- integrated infrastructure solution that combines IBM storage and Cisco server, networking and soft-ware components, as the foundation for its new MEDITECH deployment.
Peterson recalls: “We did not go looking for a converged solution, but once IBM and our trusted partner Key Information Systems demonstrated what VersaStack brought to the table it was an obvious choice.
Incorporating all- flash storage via the IBM® FlashSystem® V9000, at a significantly lower price than the main competing offer, we knew that it would offer an exceptional price-performance ratio.
The official certification tests for MEDITECH on IBM FlashSystem V9000 yielded impressive results. Peterson notes: “The FlashSystem V9000 produced one of the highest performance results for MEDITECH, assuring us we had chosen wisely.”
IBM and Key Information Systems worked together to configure and design the solution, with Lumenate, a MEDITECH partner, managing integration of the new software.
“Together, IBM and Key Information Systems were a formidable team, achieving the fastest implementation of this type that I have ever seen, with every deadline met or exceeded,” says Peterson. “We had not worked with Lumenate before, but they quickly united with IBM and Key Information Systems in a cohesive working relationship you would have thought was years in the making.”
Offering Henry Mayo a single point of control via Cisco UCS Director, VersaStack brings unprecedented simplicity to the hospital’s IT environment.
“The modular design of VersaStack, all controlled via a single pane of glass, is extremely exciting,” says Peterson. “In choosing the solution, we get the benefits of the best technology from leading vendors with a commitment to one voice for support, which promises quick resolution of any issues.”
Instant time-to- value
Currently, Henry Mayo is working through the test and build phase of the MEDITECH deployment, but has already started to use the integrated storage solution more widely. Specifically, the hospital is taking advantage of integrated data compression and encryption features to optimize its IT environment.
“A key benefit of the VersaStack platform is that it incorporates virtualization capabilities that allow us to make use of our existing investments by enabling us to manage our existing IBM Storwize® V7000 storage within a single software-defined environment,” elaborates Peterson. “The IBM SIO [Storage Infrastructure Optimization] team provided recommendations for sizing and real-time compression that reduces the size of our storage environment by up to three times without affecting performance.
“Deploying VersaStack has also dramatically enhanced and simplified security, as data at rest is now stored on encrypted hardware. The solution is built with security in mind from end to end, far surpassing our expectations and ideally suited for a medical environment.”
Ushering in a new dawn
Once the new MEDITECH solution is in full use, Henry Mayo will be able to offer its physicians access to electronic health record (EHR) data at any time and any location. Supported by high-performance infrastructure, the hospital expects that this data will be available at greater speed and reliability.
“The combination of VersaStack and the new MEDITECH software will ensure our physicians can always get the information they need to make swift, high- quality clinical decisions without delay,” comments Peterson. “Consequently, they can spend more time where they are most needed: at the patient’s bedside, and they are better- equipped while they are there. Overall, we expect this to help us enrich patient care and improve outcomes.”
By enabling more efficient ways of working, the solutions enable Henry Mayo to do more with existing resources, helping the hospital meet growing demand for care.
Peterson concludes: “Easier infra-structure management means we can offer care- givers new capabilities without adding to our headcount behind the scenes, enabling both physicians and our IT teams to work more productively.
“VersaStack is a true platform for the future: we can scale up with ease when we want, and provision new MEDITECH environments within a few weeks rather than the months it took before. Giving us the ideal foundation for our leap forward with the new release of MEDITECH soft-ware, VersaStack is playing a critical role in our evolution as a hospital.”
