Background and Challenge

Six years after inception, Summit Medical Center (SMC) had outgrown its existing electronic health record (EHR) technology and was exploring new alternatives. For this small community hospital, security for their servers was of the utmost importance. Their tornado-prone location near Oklahoma City posed an ongoing threat of natural disaster that could render their EHR system unusable. They needed to ensure server stability against any such event. In-depth research and interviews with vendors led SMC to select MEDITECH for their replacement EHR system. SMC then sought a certified infrastructure vendor to support the implementation, which had to be completed within one year. Tegria’s reputation and deep experience with MEDITECH made us a clear choice for SMC.

Results

• Remote hosting accelerated transition
• 3 months saved in initial build time
• <3 days to recover from a Malware attack
• 24/7 rapid response

Solution

In lieu of the initial plans to keep the servers in-house, SMC worked with Tegria to establish an external hosted environment, which would ensure their servers’ safety and stability during the EHR transition. Tegria hosted the new MEDITECH environment for the first 90 days of implementation. Over a single weekend, Tegria was able to copy over all of SMC’s server content to their new on-premises environment. This saved SMC nearly three months on their initial build timeline. For the next year and a half, MEDITECH and Tegria provided backup support, ensuring that SMC had ongoing access to their data even during storms and other potential interruptions.

SMC generally thought natural disasters were the big threat to their data security. Yet, a few years after going live with MEDITECH, a malware attack took the EHR system offline, crippling all hospital servers. SMC’s first call was to Tegria, who immediately responded to provide triage and support. Within three days of the attack, we had the MEDITECH servers up and running again and made our experts available 24/7 for any support questions or concerns. Throughout the attack, we stood side-by-side with our partners SMC—participating in multiple daily phone calls. Tegria hosted a new environment for SMC on the cloud until they could take their servers back in-house, thus providing access to critical health records during the rebuild.

Outcomes

Throughout the post-attack rebuild follow-on support, we found several ways to demonstrate our commitment and loyalty to SMC, keeping their servers hosted, responding to emergent concerns, and providing round-the-clock support. SMC had several vendor options to choose from for their original MEDITECH implementation, but their intentional and now long-standing alignment with us has resulted in a tremendous sense of security for the hospital against natural disasters and malware attacks. True to our values, we listen first. Working together to solve issues and staying up-to-date on hospital changes are only a few of the many ways we demonstrate our true partnership and commitment to SMC.