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Thibodaux Regional Medical Center
Thibodaux, LA
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Thibodaux Regional Medical Center and JJWild focus on quality and rapid implementation of their comprehensive MEDITECH healthcare information system.
Lafourche Parish, Louisiana is in the heartland of Cajun country with antique shops, swamp tours, charter fishing, and festivals. It’s also the home of Thibodaux Regional Medical Center, one of the nation’s best regional hospitals. In fact, according to Press Ganey Associates, the leading patient-satisfaction-survey company, Thibodaux Regional is ranked in the top 1% in the nation for patient satisfaction. Evolving from the 26-bed St. Joseph Hospital founded in 1929, the Thibodaux Regional Medical Center has grown into an innovative and technologically advanced 149-bed facility. With a staff of more than 780 healthcare professionals and 100 physicians in nearly every major medical specialty, Thibodaux Regional is dedicated to providing high-quality care to southeast Louisiana.
To keep pace with the demands of 21st century medicine, Thibodaux Regional has recently implemented a comprehensive MEDITECH hospital information system on HP ProLiant systems using the integration and consulting services of JJWild.
Focus on excellence
Thibodaux Regional CEO Greg Stock is focused on excellence. “At Thibodaux Regional we have a vision to be best in class, performing way above the averages. We constantly ask ourselves how we can get higher levels of performance out of our organization in pursuit of patient satisfaction. Interwoven through it all," says Greg, "is the issue of having state-of-the-art information systems. This function touches virtually all departments of the hospital.”
What’s more, Greg says, “the sophistication and functionality of a hospital information
system is a competitive differentiator in terms of attracting doctors to the staff. Physicians want timely information delivered to free them up for patient care.
Old system not up to the challenge
After attending a HIMSS conference in New Orleans in mid-2001, Greg realized that his team’s efforts at continuous quality improvement were hampered by the existing information system. “In the area of quality it becomes quickly apparent that you need reliable, easily accessible data,” Greg asserts. “Organizations get frustrated without good data. The systems I saw at the HIMSS conference were cutting edge. By comparison, our existing system was costing a lot of money and slowing us down. We needed a robust system that would enable us to get results – high performance, high-level results -- and would accommodate our goals and objectives.”
No one knew better about the need to improve the hospital’s information system than Chief Information Officer Terry Evans. “I inherited an outdated system based on a best-of-breed approach that was hampered by multiple, incompatible interfaces. Plus, the hospital had two separate network operating systems running on old Cat 3 wiring instead of Cat 5. The switches were not optimally located and the data lines exceeded link capacity. And if that weren’t enough, the ability to back up data was poor.”
Revolution – not evolution
Greg says that the approach Thibodaux Regional took to update its information system involved a “selection process with criteria based on our style of leadership and the fact that we wanted a quick install – not an evolution. We wanted to achieve the bulk of the implementation quickly, to correlate with on-going activities in the organization as a whole.”
Thibodaux Regional engaged in an in-depth study of potential solutions.
“ As we went along in our site visits and drilling down into the needs of our departments, my staff expressed positive feelings about MEDITECH,” Greg recalls. “We liked MEDITECH because it was usable and results-oriented. We became convinced that they were the right vendor. We haven’t regretted our decision.”
Greg reports that Thibodaux Regional was “on a tight schedule to install the system along with 20 different applications. We intended to do it in a time frame that was six months to a year shorter than the norm.”
JJWild joins the team
“ As we developed our relationship with MEDITECH they introduced us to JJWild” says Greg. “As a sole-source, one-stop partner, JJWild was very helpful with the products and services they brought to the table and their assistance in the install process. We had an array of items to deal with and JJWild was instrumental in advising us on all those issues.”
In considering Thibodaux Regional’s relationship with JJWild, Greg says,
“ to succeed in this business you have to be organized and communicate clearly with a partner. At the same time, it is absolutely essential to have a partner who is organized and can communicate as well. And it must have the resources and people to meet the challenge. We brought in JJWild to resolve problems and break through barriers that would slow us down. We were very satisfied with the people they provided.”
Building the new infostructure
Thibodaux Regional and JJWild polished off an impressive “to-do” list in record time between April and December of 2002.
JJWild consultants worked with Thibodaux Regional system managers to consolidate the two network operating systems into one enterprise-wide solution. At the same time, JJWild recommended that old cabling be replaced and network components relocated. Terry stresses that “there is more to building a network than just stringing cable. You must place the right components in the right locations and at the right speed. The network is only as fast as the bottleneck it encounters. The advice of JJWild was critical.” The Thibodaux-JJWild team implemented an enterprise-wide Legato backup solution, as well as improved Internet capabilities with a unique IP-address scheme.
If overhauling the network and creating a robust backup solution weren’t enough in this timeframe, Thibodaux Regional also installed a complete PACS solution. JJWild advised them on how to structure a segment of their network to keep PACS data flow off the main network.
JJWild's consultants helped Thibodaux Regional deploy bar code solutions to optimize the workflow process for Patient Admitting and Materials Management. And, says Terry, “JJWild helped us convert to and install just about every module that MEDITECH sells.”
The new MEDITECH installation is powered by industry-standard HP ProLiant 380 servers with direct-attached storage. Rackmounted, the two-processor ProLiant systems provide enterprise-scale compute power in a space-saving footprint. Terry says the dense server configurations “enable us to meet our budget, space, and resource requirements while optimizing the performance of the MEDITECH applications.”
Quality assurance
For the deployment, Greg created an IS quality-assurance team to monitor the overall process. “We ended up with weekly meetings where we would have a list of issues and hammer through them at a multi-departmental level. We seek not just what is good for ‘my’ department but what is good for the patient. We needed a streamlined process that made sense, managed by people who understood how the whole system works. As a member of the team, JJWild played a key role in ensuring the install was done exceptionally well. Because they were very familiar with MEDITECH, JJWild consulted on how the system would affect all the departments.”
The finished product
CIO Terry Evans is pleased with the results. “On our old system, one report took 24 hours to run. That has been cut down to an hour. Plus, running that and other reports competed with network resources. Now, running those reports does not impact day-to-day operations."
“With the way the network and report functionality is structured, the end users are empowered to do their own reporting. Now the department heads can extract the data they need and research their own key performance measures.”
Terry is delighted with the progress that has been made in such a short time. “We essentially have everything for our infostructure in place,” says Terry. “The impact has been felt in the IS department where the number of FTEs has decreased, with just five people running IS and staff satisfaction at 99%. The IS people who suffered through the earlier system are now reveling in the new one.”
About JJWild, Terry Evans says: “They have exceeded our expectations. They are an easy company to recommend because they deliver. They are not above rolling up their sleeves and getting down to the details. They were part of the solution and part of our team.”
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