Growing organizations need IT infrastructure to support their goals. That’s especially true when the organization’s role is to utilize state of the art technology to provide exceptional healthcare. Our imaging center client sought to renew their equipment and rebuild their facilities to deliver on that promise to their patients and their staff.
IT infrastructure is our central nervous system
Four years ago, our imaging client came to ProSource with outdated technology and end of life equipment. While many healthcare organizations hope their legacies are gifts of health and life, legacy technology doesn’t necessarily support that goal. A partnership with ProSource means they were able to revitalize their practice, marking a period of unprecedented growth and improved patient care.
Early in the partnership, ProSource identified a full range of issues from limited third party oversight of IT from a departing service provider to no internal support. It was clear from the lapsed software and outdated hardware that the client would need a complete overhaul of their IT infrastructure given technology’s role as their “central nervous system”; that system was clearly faltering.
In fact, despite no internal IT team, there was a new center opening and a major software upgrade prepared for deployment. ProSource was able to navigate a very tricky IT landscape as well as a constantly evolving management and approval process to ensure it could deliver what the client needed.
“ProSource had a unique opportunity to help a very good client through a rough time,” explains Leon Hart, President and CEO of ProSource. “We always knew our job would end, but our goal is always to empower every business we serve to reach their potential. It was about doing our best to help our client succeed. Looking back over these past 4.5 years, we have helped transform the client into a mature, thriving, organized business.”
Restoring our practice meant investments in IT
“ProSource has been my go-to expert for all things IT and IT related,” notes the Corporate Director of Ambulatory Services. “Their IT guidance has been timely, relevant, comprehensive, correct, and given us the right solutions at a cost that was within budget.”
One of the biggest challenges facing the center was decaying infrastructure that impacted every aspect of the business, from the care provided to employee morale. In fact, according to their leadership, less than 25% of their own physicians, from owned healthcare facilities, were sending patient referrals to their imaging center. Despite that, they believed they could be a premier imaging facility, but only with the right IT infrastructure and only with the right guidance and leadership.
“If it had not been for ProSource and the leadership team who put nuts and bolts together for our IT infrastructure and system,” asserts the Corporate Director of Ambulatory Services, “we could not have done this.”
Given the dilapidated equipment, a lack of IT support, lapsed subscriptions, and compliance concerns, the project required some prioritization and urgency. Technical issues were impacting everything including employee productivity, and a full technical solution was needed and needed quickly.
“ProSource’s senior leadership’s willingness to tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly really demonstrated integrity. Very quickly I came to trust Lee and the recommendations he was making and to move us forward at an economical cost. We got great value, but the value is also in the relationship and what ProSource brings to the table.”
Over 4 years, there were more than 25 normalization projects consisting of 1,500 project hours, including a data center migration, consolidation, and upgrades resulting in greater than 99% uptime for their systems. “Big organizations sometimes spend a lot of time thinking and discussing things before moving forward,” asserts the Corporate Director of Ambulatory Services. “What ProSource was able to do in all of our projects was to get to the heart of the matter and get it moving forward and resolved in a timely fashion.”
Data security and integrity came first
Given the importance of healthcare data and the nature of a dissolving relationship with an IT management company, ProSource needed to move fast and with care. The first step was prioritizing preventing data loss and ensuring access security.
To start, the ProSource team established control over all in-use and sensitive archived data. From there, they were able to assess and reinforce network security with changes to both external equipment and internal protocols such as passwords. Internal network adjustments also included removing casual administrative access to sensitive data and applications as well as limiting remote access to desktops and servers. Internal email servers were shifted to ProSource’s hosted email service to prevent a large hardware investment and enhance email security and accessibility.
Further, ProSource was able to migrate a dying data center in a remote imaging center to an on-premise data center with almost no downtime, replace an antiquated phone system with an advanced VoIP platform, and provide superior customer experience. Over the course of the relationship, there was a complete digital transformation that delivered the access, security, and scalability the organization needed to not only improve services, but open the door for continued growth and success.
ProSource was able to get what I needed to be successful, including a variety of projects: the upgrades, workstation standardization, the rebuilds, security guidelines, PACS, VOIP and call management services, and managing our servers. ProSource made it look easy, even though I know they were working their tails off.
— Corporate Director of Ambulatory Services
Bottom line
“The state of our imaging center was in disarray. However, I quickly came to realize the one ray of sunshine was Lee and the ProSource team. I learned quickly to depend upon them for giving me the straight scoop, the unvarnished truth, the positives and negatives of what we had and needed to do. That’s a testament to Lee’s leadership and the people in the ranks who provide the day to day service.”
Outcomes
- 25 normalization projects over 4 years, consisting of 1,550 project hours
- 6 imaging center openings over 4 years
- Scan volume increased 341% over 3 years
- Net revenue increased 375% over 3 years
- Compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
