Managed Services in Health Care

Sandy Iannarone is a very busy Practice Administrator in a five physician clinical cardiology practice in Manhattan. Recently they decided to move from managing their practice using paper and pencils to computers by acquiring two software applications; A4 Practice Management and EMR. Sandy was extremely concerned about their move to a computer centered operation. If the systems went down the doctors could not see patients, people could not schedule appointments, MRIs could not take place and 80% of the office would come to a screeching halt. This was the most important decision they would make for the future success of their practice and it had to be done right.

Before they moved to the A4 Practice Management and EMR applications Park East managed their computer network under a contract that each year pre-purchased days of on-call technical support. This always presented a problem for Sandy since she would have to determine whether or not to wait until there were enough problems on her list of computer issues that needed to be resolved to make it worthwhile to call for someone to come on-site. If an urgent problem developed she would have to call for someone to come on-site immediately even though it may only take 15 minutes to solve the problem. From the time she placed the call until they showed up might take a few hours.

Sandy called in Custom Computer Specialists, Inc. ("Custom"). A consultant met with Sandy to understand the goals of the organization, their problems and her concerns. A solution was developed and proposed using CustomMS, an IT managed services solution. This program provides Sandy with around the clock (24 hours per day 7 days per week) remote monitoring and management of their entire computer network from servers and routers all the way down to the desktop pc workstations, printers, and mobile users. Now when a problem arises, the Custom service desk notifies the appropriate individuals and typically resolves the issue within minutes.

Click here to download the Park East Cardiovascular Case Study.