Lakeridge Health Corporation
Oshawa, ON

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Lakeridge successfully transforms IT infrastructure with the help of JJWild

The province of Ontario, Canada has embarked on an unprecedented modernization of its health system, moving towards technology-enabled care in order to improve and sustain healthcare. This will require the leadership and collaboration of health organizations ready to leverage technology. A dramatic example of this initiative can be seen at the Lakeridge Health Corporation (LHC) in the province’s South Central Region. LHC recently completed a major transformation of its healthcare infrastructure in partnership with MEDITECH, HP/Compaq, and JJWild. In fact, LHC is one of the first Canadian sites to migrate to MEDITECH MAGIC on Windows® 2000. The system supports five hospitals and about 30 other off-site locations serving the region’s 500,000 residents. LHC’s 4,000 staff and physicians handle on the order of 147,000 emergency room visits and 221,600 in-patient admissions per year.

Sal Lanuto, CEO of JJWild, welcomes the opportunity to work in a health system as progressive as Canada’s. “Our 20 years of MEDITECH integration experience puts us in an ideal position to help organizations such as Lakeridge Health plan and execute a successful migration. With our consulting, implementation, and support capabilities, we can offer a full range of solutions to help customers, whether they are implementing MEDITECH for the first time or have been users for many years. We look at our role here at Lakeridge Health as a trusted advisor who can help them make the most of MEDITECH.”

New SAN and server system

Deb Anthofer, Program Leader IT services for LHC is the proud director of the new Storage Area Network (SAN) and server system. “Prior to the upgrade,” says Deb, “we were working with old servers that were at capacity and badly needing replacement. In addition, our storage was decentralized which made it very difficult to manage and plan for capacity.”

“Our goals for the new implementation included consolidating LHC’s critical systems data; centralizing storage for more efficient management and capacity planning; developing an improved Disaster Recovery Plan; improving the performance and availability of servers, networks, and storage systems; and migrating to MEDITECH MAGIC on Windows 2000.”

Strategic Planning

Planning for this ambitious and far-reaching project began in 2001. Rejean Loisel, Team Leader for Technical Services Information Technology, was part of the effort that crafted the Request For Quote and reviewed the submissions from major computer-industry players.

Rejean brought valuable experience to the process, having participated in the evolution of systems at LHC from its beginnings in June of 1998. At that time, the Health Services Restructuring Commission directed five hospital facilities in the Durham area to form the single entity that became Lakeridge Health Corporation. The IT department has been involved in a range of implementation activities enabling regionalization, redevelopment, and, with this latest project, migration.

In describing the move to a SAN environment, Rejean says that LHC was guided by a strategic long-term plan backed by “senior management’s strong support and approval.” The plan included “a fundamental idea of what we needed today and what we would need for the next ten years.” A critical requirement was integrated storage.

Data overload

With 1.8 terabytes of segregated data, the task of management was becoming cumbersome and expensive. Not to mention the fact that the documentation for the Disaster Recovery Process filled 13 loose-leaf binders. “That’s when the thought of implementing a SAN became very attractive,” says Rejean.

A turnkey solution

After analyzing the proposals, LHC chose the team of MEDITECH, HP/Compaq, and JJWild. “Along with a very reasonable price,” says Rejean, “they came to the table with a turnkey solution. JJWild is probably the only vendor with such a strong combination of integration experience and comprehensive knowledge of the MEDITECH environment. So we didn’t just look at the price tag, we looked at the alliance and what they can deliver today and tomorrow.”

The right solution at the right time

“ Our main concern was the migration,” notes Rejean. “It had to be well planned because we were not only modernizing and consolidating our systems, we were also moving into a new facility. We had to transfer our existing systems to a new computer room at the Lakeridge Health Oshawa site and then implement the new SAN solution and the migration to MAGIC on Windows 2000.”

Oshawa has been a MEDITECH site since 1989 and currently supports over 30 MEDITECH modules – both clinical and administrative. In addition, there are some 85 applications from other vendors running within the corporation. The software migration task the IT staff faced was truly mission-critical.

Rejean notes “JJWild had the knowledge and wisdom to help us make the right decisions. They kept us up to date. They were protective, serving as impartial advisors who had the right solutions at the right time.”

In advance of the “go-live” date of May 8, 2002, server, storage, and networking equipment was delivered, computer-room electrical issues were resolved, and the hundreds of detailed tasks that characterize a migration of this complexity were completed.

Rejean says, “I have been involved in project management for 9 years and have never seen a project that went this well. It was executed perfectly. But the success story is really for our patients,” concludes Rejean. “Everything we do is done for them, to increase the quality of care.”

Dramatically improved performance

The actual migration of the MEDITECH modules and the clinical systems from other vendors was accomplished overnight in just under eight hours. The new system delivers services over a wide area network from the Lakeridge Health Oshawa computer room and supports approximately 3,500 users, 1,300 desktops, and 850 networked printers. Deb Anthofer reports that the new implementation has “dramatically improved application performance” for both the IT department and the user community. “Purges that took two to three days are done in just two hours . . . month-end roll-ups are finished in five hours instead of fifteen . . . the pharmacy midnight run is completed in four instead of eighteen hours . . . loading of the drug knowledge quarterly update takes twelve minutes instead of seventy and can be done during regular hours without impacting response times . . . and the General Ledger monthly compile is done in two hours instead of twenty four.”

Commitment and communication

Deb says that her level of comfort with the JJWild team “grew from seeing MEDITECH, HP/Compaq, and JJWild at the same table with a strong commitment to the project and good communication among the team players.

“They were there when we needed them to be, including the 4 A.M. go-live. If I had a technical, logistical, or timing question, JJWild had the answer,” Deb notes. “The process went extremely well. The implementation team of JJWild, HP/Compaq, MEDITECH, and Lakeridge Health’s own IT department accomplished a smooth migration. All milestones along the project timeline were met.”

Bottom line for Deb Anthofer? “We trusted JJWild with a big job, and they were there for us.”

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