The Situation
Managing an increasingly complex information technology (IT) infrastructure is a significant undertaking for large and small hospitals alike. Particularly for rural and community hospitals struggling to stay afloat, it’s challenging to keep up with continuous technology advances that are costly, time-consuming, and a strain on valuable resources. Similarly, in rural areas and smaller towns, it can be difficult to find IT professionals who have all of the specialized expertise needed to support a hospital.
As a result of these obstacles, many community hospitals have outdated and non-compliant software, unsupported hardware, disparate systems, limited resources and expertise gaps. When it comes to Core IT Services, community hospitals need a partner they can rely on.
Benefits of CHC Core IT Services
Cost savings: Because CHC owns, manages and consults with hospitals across the country, vendors offer preferred pricing that is passed along to clients. In some cases, those savings can be up to 50% less than market pricing for the exact same service or tool.
Increased stability: By providing additional resources, lower cost and added security, CHC helps reduce a hospital’s organizational risk and improve operational efficiency. The hospital benefits from an IT infrastructure that streamlines and integrates its systems while providing innovative new tools. With a stable and secure infrastructure in place, the hospital’s IT staff can shift from crisis mode and move to a strategic and proactive approach, leveraging an always modern architecture.
Ongoing support: CHC’s expert team of professionals are here every step of the way. Hospitals count on CHC to provide prompt and skilled technical support 24x7x365.
Core IT Service Offering
CHC offers a suite of solutions tailored to the needs of community hospitals. For each area supported, the CHC IT team conducts a careful review, screening and selection process to identify a recommended technology or software provider. This practice allows CHC team members to be experts in each software tool and efficiently support hospital needs. In addition, by aggregating the software investment across all CHC hospitals, clients receive the best pricing available. Our CORE IT services include:
Unified communications: Implementing and managing the full suite of cloud-based communications and collaboration products, including office applications, email, video conferencing, cloud storage, intranet, and web services brings hospitals a comprehensive solution for their communications needs. CHC’s model effectively handles a hospital’s communications needs and promotes teamwork throughout your facility. Combining the communications platform with best-in-class email encryption, policy-based cloud management, and a daily backup of cloud data, gives the hospital a solid platform in place.
Electronic health records (EHR) software: EHR implementation, along with informatics and interoperability, help to support, maintain and optimize your system. Special areas of expertise include system evaluations, upgrades, reporting and compliance. CHC’s experts have worked in various inpatient and ambulatory systems, and CHC can bring enterprise-level relationships with many vendors to bear to support your needs.
Monitoring and patch management: It’s critical for hospitals to have a systematic method for software patch monitoring and updating. CHC offers a cloud-based tool to monitor for software updates across the entire hospital environment and automate patch deployment. By staying current with software updates and patches, the hospital reduces risk for security breaches and software bugs that can disrupt operations.
Data backup: Installing and managing regular backups using CHC’s backup service provides best-in-class air gapped cloud backups that protect sensitive information. CHC’s backup experts will work with your facility to ensure your critical data are protected from hacking and phishing attacks.
Cybersecurity: Because hospitals are a significant target for cyberattacks, the CHC IT team specializes in providing planning, strategy, cybersecurity monitoring and tools to reduce vulnerability, from next-gen firewalls to SIEM and scanning tools. These tools are coupled with our behavioral heuristic scanning logic that looks for anomalies in your network and alerts our 24×7 security operations center.
Help desk and ticketing: You can’t manage what you can’t measure and utilizing a ticketing system is critical to measuring the workload and performance of your people, processes and technology. Our cloud-based system components (User Collaboration and Cloud Platform, Enterprise Backup/Recovery, Comprehensive Security Program) all operate in a HIPAA-compliant, best-practices security framework. Coupled with our 24/7 help desk, we can offer your users support day or night.
Consulting: IT is a strategic component in the efficient operations of any hospital. The CHC team offers insight into how technology can help reduce cost, increase efficiency and improve patient experience at the hospital. By participating in monthly operations review meetings, CHC provides ongoing assistance with data analysis to identify areas for improvement.
Our Customized Approach
For all CHC Consulting services, including Core IT support, each hospital client works with CHC to design a customized program tailored to the hospital’s needs. For example, the CHC Consulting team can step in to oversee all aspects of IT management or help on a more limited basis with a specific area of technology. Hospital leadership selects services based on the facility’s specific needs and then CHC builds a customized support plan. Hospitals only pay for the level of support required.
The CHC Consulting Difference
By partnering with CHC’s IT team, community hospitals receive practical solutions that help enhance efficiencies, improve quality, and strengthen financial stability. The recommendations are tried and tested in CHC’s owned hospitals.
Clients appreciate CHC’s experience and expertise supporting community hospitals and the organization’s mission-based approach. Count on CHC to implement a cost-effective and reliable IT platform that will help improve operational performance for your organization. Contact CHC today to schedule a free consultation.