King’s Daughters’ Hospital
Madison, IN

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King’s Daughters’ Hospital replaces its outdated IS infrastructure to create a completely integrated system under JJWild’s guidance.

Serendipity strikes when you least expect it. King’s Daughters’ Hospital and Health Services went shopping for a wholesale replacement for its outdated and maxed-out information system, and ended up with not only a new system that exceeded expectations, but one that laid the groundwork for business continuance.

Business continuance ensures organizations that their critical data and systems are always available to the people who depend on them—even when disaster strikes.

“Our equipment had reached its limit both in storage capacity and in CPU usage,” explained Linda Darnell, Director of Information Systems, King’s Daughters’ Hospital. “It was impacting almost all of our processes – from general reporting to patient care. The system was slow and processes were suffering.”

Reports were taking up to 10 hours to run, month-end deadlines were being missed, and Darnell knew it was time to replace the hospital’s aging equipment. Slowed down administrative processes were beginning to impact patient care.

“We were still able to take care of the patients,” she emphasized, “but the system was holding up registration, holding up processing, and making other patient care processes slower than we wanted them to be.”

HP comes highly recommended

Today King’s Daughters’ Hospital is standardized on MEDITECH integrated healthcare software solutions. But the hospital’s existing hardware vendor had decided not to continue selling MEDITECH-approved equipment—which meant that King’s Daughters’ needed not only new hardware, but a system integrator as well. Darnell turned to JJWild.

“It was very important for us to have a partner who had a long history with MEDITECH, and who could sell us the hardware and know what was appropriate,” she recalled. "When we started talking to JJWild, HP was their platform recommendation. And I was very comfortable with that name, so it was an easy choice.”

Unexpected solution for the dilemma of disaster recovery

At the time Darnell started talking with JJWild about replacing the hospital’s computing systems, she and her team were already aware that they needed to address the problem of disaster recovery.

“But we found outsourcing services to be very expensive. We also knew that we’d have to maintain a data connection between us and the outside service, but in a disaster, communication seems to go first—which wouldn’t leave us much of a recovery option.”

King’s Daughters’ had four CPUs supporting its existing information system, and Darnell’s team figured that they would need six new CPUs to replace the current four – So they priced and budgeted accordingly.

“By working with JJWild, we found that four HP CPUs would provide plenty of room for growth and expansion, and we wouldn’t need the other two CPUs for live usage,” related Darnell. “But the price was so good and the opportunity was there to resolve our disaster recovery issues by using those two extra servers to back up the four live ones –this would work since we were running duplicate copies of everything.”

Darnell and her team worked with JJWild to design and implement a low-cost disaster-recovery solution in the bunker-like basement of the hospital next door.

“It made more sense to go ahead and do it internally,” she said. “That way we could own it and not have to pay someone long-term maintenance on it. Now those two CPUs are there for disaster recovery and available as a temporary solution for future expansion if we need them. It was an opportunity too good to pass up.”

Moving forward with efficient, integrated systems

Today the new MEDITECH and HP environment supports all of King’s Daughters’ financial systems, plus all patient care systems that are currently online—primarily the ancillary systems, such as lab, radiology, and pharmacy—and the offices for the hospital’s employed physicians.

“Before MEDITECH, we had small systems in different offices that didn’t talk to each other. We had integrated them with MEDITECH, but it wasn’t efficient or effective because the system was so slow,” Darnell said. “With the combination of MEDITECH, the new HP hardware, and JJWild’s guidance and expertise, we have a very efficient, completely integrated system where the data flows from hospital to physician offices to administration for reporting. Everything is connected and works very well together.”

The new system has ratcheted up the hospital’s efficiency level several notches. “This is allowing us to report more efficiently, to care for our patients more efficiently and effectively, and to move forward in the growth of our clinical applications,” reported Darnell. “We’re able to move forward with more clinical patient-care applications because now we’ve got the room to grow. We’re working toward an online medical record, and we have the hardware in place to do that.”

Out of the frying pan and into the comfort zone

King’s Daughters’ information system was headed for trouble before JJWild developed a plan for replacing the hospital’s hardware without interruption to patient care. “We went live in April 2002, and I can tell you that on May 1, our system would have crashed—we would not have been able to close April because there wasn’t enough space left on that old system,” noted Darnell. “We weren’t willing to archive or delete data to make room, and wouldn’t have had the time anyway. So it was a tight deadline, and JJWild helped us meet it.”

Now she and her team are back in the comfort zone with a smoothly functioning system and adequate disaster-recovery protection—and they’re grateful that serendipity struck when it did.

This case study was originally published by HP.

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