Jason Thomas, Chief Information Officer, Green Clinic Health System

Category 

Consumerization of IT & The New C-Suite

The Company

Founded in 1948, Green Clinic has earned a reputation for its commitment to delivering quality community healthcare services to families throughout Louisiana. Today, approximately 450 employees, including more than 50 physicians, deliver a full range of critical and ancillary health services from a leading surgical hospital, community clinic and six satellite locations. To assure the highest level of patient care, Green Clinic increasingly has embraced leading-edge technologies to give physicians, nurses and administrators access to patient files and medical records from any location, on any Internet-connected device.

The Problem

To deliver the best patient care, Green Clinic deployed two state-of-the-art electronic medical records (EMR) systems for the hospital and clinic, which provide fast access to centralized, up-to-the-minute patient information.

However, the organization’s aging desktops and its inability to support the new EMR systems, coupled with doctors wanting use their own mobile devices to access the EMR, challenged the IT team’s resources and significantly impacted the doctors’ productivity and the patient experience.

The Solution 

Based on a recommendation from the EMR system vendors, Green Clinic procured new desktops and laptops for its clinic, hospital and satellite locations. These had the right technical specifications to support the new clinical EMR application. Next, in order to streamline the implementation of the clinical and hospital EMR systems, Green Clinic deployed of a full range of end-to-end solutions and services from Dell spanning end-user computing, servers, systems management and security software, storage, virtual desktop solutions, and professional services to reduce costs and complexity while elevating productivity and patient care, while providing access physician and staff access to electronic medical records from any location, on any internet-connected device.

The Results

The healthcare industry is at the forefront of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Green Clinic is no exception.

As a result of leveraging Dell’s end-to-end IT solutions, the IT team has been able to accommodate mobile devices being used within the organization, reduce resources spent on time consuming management tasks, and ultimately boost employee productivity and provide the best patient care possible by allowing physicians to focus on treating their patients and not on their technology.

As an added bonus, Green Clinic streamlined compliance with HIPAA regulations for systems management and data protection, ensuring that doctors are never exposed to the risk of financial penalties and protecting patients’
personal healthcare information (PHI).

In the future, Green Clinic will be using Dell to further streamline the management of mobile devices from a single system, which will save IT additional time and ensure all mobile devices are properly updated and secured across the network.

The Technology

Specific Dell solutions used to help solve the challenge included: Dell KACE systems management appliances, Dell SonicWALL firewalls, Dell Wyse thin client devices, Dell ProSupport, Dell SecureWorks, Dell Deployment Services, and more.

• After procuring new desktop devices and laptops for its clinic, hospital and satellite locations, the organization deployed a Dell KACE deployment appliance, which enabled Green Clinic to automate system provisioning, saving about $20,000 in EMR deployment costs by provisioning 155 laptops in just one day. The clinic also has reduced machine rebuild times from hours to minutes by using the KACE solution to wipe and reimage any corrupted or infected devices. With the Dell KACE systems management appliance, Green Clinic applications now run faster with fewer problems and IT staff can manage and secure systems and deploy software at the click of a button.

• Additional time and cost savings have been realized by moving to a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) fueled by VMware Horizon View with Dell PowerEdge™ R610 and R710 servers with Dell PowerVault™ MD3 Series storage arrays. With assistance from Dell Deployment Services, Green Clinic was able to get its VDI environment up and running in three weeks. Now, the hospital staff securely access centralized virtual desktops using a combination of Dell Wyse C90 thin-clients , Dell Latitude E6420 laptops, and/or their own tablet PCs or smartphones, depending on how they prefer to work.

• Dell’s end-to-end solutions have helped Green Clinic streamline data security and HIPAA compliance to safeguard its physicians from being exposed to the risk of financial penalties. To ensure that protected health information is secure at all times, Green Clinic installed Dell SonicWALL firewalls to lock down its network connecting the clinic, hospital, and satellite sites while optimizing bandwidth, which is especially important in rural areas with low-bandwidth connections.

• To further protect critical systems and patient data, Green Clinic deployed Dell SecureWorks’ Managed Intrusion Prevention Service (IPS), which alerts and blocks an organization’s network from potential cyber-attacks.

Metrics 

• Reduced EMR deployment costs by $20,000 in staff overtime to prepare new systems

• IT saved 20 hours a week on desktop management, freeing time to enhance patient-facing services

• Doctors and nurses gained the ability access electronic medical records anytime, on any device

• Nurses are able to work faster and no longer need to stay late at the clinic

• Streamlined HIPAA compliance protects doctors and patients

 

Disruptive Factor

The Green Clinic Health System is physician owned, so when its doctors started bringing iPads into the office, the IT team had to find a way to ensure the devices were able to access the EMR data and other critical apps. Embracing the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend has extended the organization’s ‘mobility’ factor and because Green Clinic is located in a very medically-dense area filled with other hospitals and clinics, this helped them to not only remain competitive, but to offer something to physicians and clinical staff that the other competing organizations were not in a position to provide. This flexibility has given Green Clinic the upper hand in recruiting and retaining the most skilled healthcare providers in our area.  Ultimately this shift has resulted in higher quality patient care, which is what Green Clinic is all about.

Shining Moment

Our shining moment and when we knew we were doing something right, was early on in our BYOD deployment efforts.  One of our Internal Medicine physicians came to the IT Department to show off his new smartphone.  We were able to get him set up for EMR access within about five minutes, something he didn’t even know was available yet at the time, and he went on a tour of the main clinic showing off what he could now do on his mobile device.  Within about 10 minutes, five more physicians showed up at IT to get the same treatment and the original physician left the building and went over to a competing hospital to show off to their staff.  That’s when we knew we were on to something and IT efforts were not going to go unnoticed.  Since then, that original work to make our systems secure, mobile, and flexible has resulted in the expansion of our systems into two nearby competing hospitals, one of which signed a contract with us and replaced some of their own systems with ours.

 

About Green Clinic

Since 1948, the Green Clinic Health System has held a well-deserved reputation for its commitment to providing quality healthcare services to families throughout Louisiana looking for a more personal and responsive patient experience. Today, more than 50 physicians provide a full range of health services covering more than 20 specialties, from family medicine and pediatric care to diagnostic radiology and cardiac imaging.  In addition to the main facility, the Green Clinic also operates five additional satellite clinics as well as a full-service surgical hospital, recently rated #1 in northern Louisiana according to HCAHPS results.