Enterprise Healthcare Guide Embracing Technology for a Healthier World

Transcription

1 2013 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property. Enterprise Healthcare Guide Embracing Technology for a Healthier World

2 Contents 5Overview 6Highly-Secure VPN Helps Healthcare Provider Stabilize Costs and Network Performance 8Hospital Expands Services to Improve Patient Care 9Provider Manages Growth with Streamlined IP Network 11 Sprawling Medical Center Builds a Network for the Future 13 Healthcare Group Protects Patient Data with Managed Security Services 14 Conclusion: The Promise of a Healthier Tomorrow 2 Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World 3

3 Overview Rising costs, increasing regulations, extensive mergers and acquisitions, and changes in the way we interact have significantly altered the healthcare landscape and created challenges for healthcare organizations. Healthcare providers are looking for ways to maximize resources to improve patient care and increase organizational efficiency. The use of electronic health records (EHRs), digital imaging and storage requirements, and software and hardware utilization has risen in the last few years as organizations find ways to improve communication while addressing privacy and accessibility requirements, collaboration demands and government regulations such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). Healthcare professionals are working to develop new strategies to communicate with patients and other caregivers, maintain patient privacy and security, contain costs and maximize resources all while trying to focus on what s most important: providing affordable quality care, improving patient outcomes and staying ahead of the competition. AT&T continues to enable healthcare organizations support real-time collaboration with highly-secure and reliable networks to support the bandwidth-rich applications that bring todays medical advances to realization. The following use cases demonstrate how an Internet Protocol (IP) converged network architecture can enable a powerful transformation that not only establishes a connected healthcare environment in which to manage immediate business needs, but also forms a foundation for addressing future connectivity and collaboration challenges. 4 Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World 5

4 Highly-Secure VPN Helps Healthcare Provider Stabilize Costs and Network Performance In Search of Secure, Reliable Network Transport As the healthcare landscape becomes more complicated, the business of providing care grows ever more specialized. By relieving state and local governments of the burden of hiring providers, one company as emerged as a leader in managing medical care in correctional institutions. To manage the inmates care, agencies contract with the provider by recruiting medical professionals, negotiating with third-party payers and managing the necessary healthcare information systems, including EHRs. To eliminate the cost and potential security problems associated with transporting prisoners to a hospital or clinic, the provider arranges videoconferences that allow healthcare professionals to provide remote care for inmates. The managed care provider needed more bandwidth to handle critical applications and connect nearly 90 client locations. The Right Solution at the Right Time AT&T Virtual Private Network (AVPN) service was implemented at just the right time in the customer s technology lifecycle. The provider recognized that transmitting voice and data on the same Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network would contain costs and improve the performance of video and voice applications. AVPN also enables the managed care provider to create private networks within its network by restricting access to ensure that sensitive data is protected. AVPN can scale to support the easy addition of new clients and allow access from landlines, mobile devices and satellite uplinks. The network architecture gives clients the security and reliability of a private network at a lower cost and without the need to manage the networks. Transitioning to the new network was a smooth process since AVPN allowed the provider to integrate existing Private Network Transport (PNT) traffic. This made it easy to merge the networks and perform a gradual migration instead of doing flash cutovers. A powerful VPN with one common platform gives managed care providers a distinct competitive advantage, enabling them to provide their customers all the security and flexibility of a private network without the high cost or management responsibilities. 6 Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World 7

5 Hospital Expands Services to Improve Patient Care Healthcare Success: Operational Efficiency and Optimal Patient Care Faced with rising costs, growing demand for services and lower reimbursement rates, many healthcare agencies are working to develop new revenue sources. One national hospital group with more than 100 acute care facilities acquired a series of home health agencies as part of a strategic initiative to expand patient care options and generate new income. Home healthcare is especially important for residents of small communities and rural areas that don t have access to the same care options available in metropolitan areas and voice service often can be their lifeline to doctors and other medical resources. However, many of the home health agencies the hospital group purchased were equipped with outdated phones that lacked even basic features. It soon became clear that the agencies needed features like voic and single number reach that would make it easier for patients to contact doctors and nurses anytime they had a question or needed help. Replacing the phones at every location was cost-prohibitive, but officials recognized the need for improved feature functionality and a common voice infrastructure that was affordable and easy to manage. They also wanted to avoid the expense and difficulty of adding and moving phones as an agency s needs changed. Managed Solution Adds Advanced Features, Strengthens Business Continuity When the home health agencies became part of the hospital organization, AT&T incorporated their voice communications onto a single cloud-based network. AT&T Unified Communications Services (UC) integrates wireline and wireless networks with core business applications that benefited all of the home health agencies locations. The hosted voice service interconnects the hospital and its newly acquired home health locations, saving money by eliminating the need to replace outdated phone systems or make expensive upgrades. Cloud-based AT&T UC is flexible enough to solve the immediate requirements of healthcare organizations. Two tightly integrated components make this possible: AT&T UC Voice is a feature-rich, cloud-based IP Telephony (IPT) solution that provides easy-to-use, high-quality voice and Private Branch Exchange (PBX) features like voic , abbreviated dialing and single number reach at a predictable monthly cost; and AT&T UC Central SM is a cloud-based, downloadable UC client application that is simple to use, with a consolidated view of multiple UC and IPT tools and a streamlined way to bring disparate applications together behind a single user interface. Unified Communications from AT&T can help healthcare organizations minimize capital expenditures and operational costs as they expand their services and extend patient care. Provider Manages Growth with Streamlined IP Network High Tech Enhances the Human Touch Surrounding hospice patients and their families with warmth and comfort has fueled rapid growth for a private Midwest healthcare provider. Patients and families responded well to the company s creative approach to adding dignity and respect to end-of-life care. In just 15 years the community-based organization has become the nation s fifth largest hospice provider, with dozens of locations across the U.S. and a plan to add several new sites every year. The company deploys the best available technology in order to free staff to spend as much time as possible with patients. One of the first hospice providers to introduce EHRs, it also uses custom scheduling tools and other proprietary solutions to manage complicated healthcare reporting and billing processes. To support existing applications and handle expected growth, the company needed a more robust infrastructure. Bandwidth for Today, a Path for the Future Traditional voice services are vital in keeping patients and their families connected with the hospice provider. Business Voice over Internet Protocol (BVoIP), in conjunction with the state-of-the-art AVPN transport platform delivers an integrated solution that provides a traditional voice experience, with alternate routing capabilities that support redundancy. The IP-based service makes it easy for patients to reach caregivers and increases the company s flexibility by eliminating the need to manage cumbersome Primary Rate Interface (PRI) configurations. It also consolidates every location onto a single billing platform, removing the challenge of managing separate bills for each site. Additionally, BVoIP makes it easier for locations to share information and provides the scalability necessary to support expansion. The solution delivers all the bandwidth the provider needs to run applications that boost staff productivity and control costs. It also creates a platform that positions the company to incorporate cloud-based solutions like UC services that make it possible for employees to access work applications anywhere, at any time. Integrated networking enables solutions to help providers grow their business by adding applications to increase care collaboration, drive productivity and manage costs. 8 Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World 9

6 Sprawling Medical Center Builds a Network for the Future A Plan for Managing Growth As a large university-based healthcare center opened new clinics and acquired existing physician practices, it became more difficult to manage its growing network. The health center needed to simplify network management while ensuring ongoing protection for patient health information. The center educates healthcare professionals, conducts research and assists in developing national prevention and treatment policies. It also provides care for thousands of patients a year through an extensive physician group practice, which includes dozens of locations at hospitals and clinics in a major metropolitan area. The university originally connected these locations with point-to-point service to ensure the security of patient data, but an influx of patients at the clinics and physician offices required a network that could easily accommodate growing volumes of patient data and images. Solution Builds on Current Success The healthcare university replaced its point-to-point connections with an AT&T Metro Ethernet infrastructure, a flexible, cost-effective alternative that delivers the computing power the healthcare system needs. The solution uses a routing scheme to provide optimal security for Protected Health Information (PHI) by creating private networks within the overall university network, enabling each location to keep its data separate from the data of other locations. University Information Technology (IT) engineers were initially skeptical about changing their existing network infrastructure, but the failover capabilities and unique routing advantages of the solution overcame the IT engineers concerns. AT&T strengthened operational continuity by using the university s existing Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) rings to link two university data centers with powerful Metro Ethernet connections. Instead of all circuits going through a single communications office, the university now achieves redundancy in the AT&T network. If one office fails, the university can re-route network traffic to a secondary site to maintain provider access to the applications and patient data. The solution enabled the university to realize significant savings, cutting its administrative costs at each site. Providers now enjoy easier access to patients EHRs, since the health system has ample bandwidth to transmit and store medical imaging studies. Metro Ethernet also allows the hospital system to perform financial and administrative tasks from a single location, increasing efficiency and reducing duplication of efforts. Finally, the solution created the foundation for new medical imaging, information management and telehealth solutions that will further support patient care. Metro Ethernet enables organizations to build on their existing infrastructure to increase computing power and provide secure, scalable access to data and applications. 10 Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World 11

7 Healthcare Group Protects Patient Data with Managed Security Services Healthcare Management Groups Seeks Secure, Scalable Solution The use of EHRs has increased dramatically in the U.S. 1, driven by billions of dollars in federal incentives2 designed to encourage providers to store patient information digitally. Computerizing patient records can help improve care, decrease the time it takes to process claims and ultimately lower medical costs. But using the Internet to transmit data and share applications can make an organization s network vulnerable to security breaches. Federal laws like HIPAA specify that failure to safe guard patient data can result in civil and criminal penalties.3 After acquiring several new hospitals, one healthcare management services group set out to improve its network security so providers could safely and more easily share digital patient information. Productivity, Peace of Mind The healthcare management group chose AT&T Managed Security, including the AT&T Premises-Based Firewall Service, to protect against the hazards that can occur when organizations use the Internet to share information. It also added AT&T Managed Intrusion Detection service to monitor unauthorized attempts to access its network and detect malicious activity by comparing data traffic to the vast, continually updated AT&T database of attack signatures. Securing its networks with managed firewall and intrusion protection services provides peace of mind. The network enables the management group to layer and share billing, pharmacy benefits management system and scheduling applications on its network. The solution increases operational efficiency, improves productivity and lowers costs. Because AT&T provides security as a service, no significant capital outlay is required. The healthcare management group also benefits from the solution s scalability as hospitals are added; it will be easy to bring their networks under the monitoring and protection of the AT&T Security Operations Center without adding additional staff. AT&T Managed Security provides a solid foundation for advanced cloud-based services that the healthcare management group can add to further improve patient care and reduce costs. To further benefit from the AT&T s expertise in threat management, the group plans to deploy AT&T Secure Gateway Service. And to improve workflows, AT&T Healthcare Community Online econnect, a fully integrated and secure online messaging service, will streamline processes with web-based document submission process. This process will shorten the providers billing reimbursement cycle. A highly-secure network is the cornerstone of a continuum of solutions that improve healthcare processes, protect patients sensitive information and lower medical costs. CHS Data Brief, Number 98, July Physician Adoption of Electronic Health Record Systems, United States, 2011 N CMS.gov, EHR Incentive Programs. html?redirect=/ehrincentiveprograms/ 3 (42 USC 1320d-5) - hipaahealth-insurance-portability Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World 13

8 Conclusion The Promise of a Healthier Tomorrow Supplying the necessary bandwidth to healthcare organization can require infrastructure upgrades further challenging providers already struggling with the rising cost of providing care, and the need to comply with an ever-growing body of government regulations. AT&T supports healthcare providers by accelerating the delivery of innovative wireless, network and cloud-based solutions. The interoperability of these solutions helps organizations lower costs and maximize productivity. To create a healthier world, AT&T offers a broad range of industry-specific solutions that enables providers, payers, and healthcare organizations to focus on what they do best care for patients. To learn more, please visit att.com/healthcare 14 Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World Enterprise Healthcare Guide: Embracing Technology for a Healthier World 15

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