Hunterdon Medical Center's CIO wanted the healthcare facility's new remote backup/recovery hot site installed and brought online as quickly and easily as possible, without interrupting existing processes or sacrificing patient quality care.
Going with QuadraMed as the overall vendor made that goal feasible. "If I was to make a recommendation to anyone, I'd say select an HIS (health information systems) vendor and let them drive," Glenn Mamary, CIO of the 176-bed acute care facility in Flemington, NJ, told TechRepublic.
That was in the third quarter of 2003, when the hot site went live. There's also been a major upgrade of QuadraMed's Web-native Affinity HIS system, which is built on InterSystems' post-relational CACHÉ 5 database. This year, Hunterdon plans to implement a series of new systems. Those plans include wireless system access to the IDN's physician order-entry system and work with tablet PCs.
Disaster recovery: Evaluating new solutions
QuadraMed was no stranger to Hunterdon, which has been a QuadraMed Affinity customer since 1998. What Mamary was asking of QuadraMed this time was a complete, electronic medical record system that would provide clinicians access to patient information "anywhere, anyplace, anytime."
Hunterdon already had a reputation for improving patient healthcare through technology. Hospitals & Health Networks calls Hunterdon one of the nation's "Most Wired" medical centres.
However, the technology needs of a hospital system are very different from those of a non-medical business. Hunterdon is a non-profit healthcare organisation committed to providing a full range of quality services that respond to the needs of the community. Hunterdon Healthcare System is partnered with the Hunterdon Physician Practice Association, forming Hunterdon Healthcare Partners LLC, an integrated delivery network (IDN) with 21 locations and about 2,000 employees; 11 physician practices; a health and wellness centre; a visiting health and support centre; and 1,400 desktops that handle approximately 347,000 patient encounters annually. None of those patients can reasonably be asked to wait while Hunterdon upgrades any of its technology.
Prior to the new hot site, Hunterdon used a vendor that assisted with offsite storage and other disaster recovery systems. Hunterdon did daily backups and those backups were tested. "If we were to have a casualty, we'd have to order a batch shipment," Mamary said.
For a long time, Hunterdon was satisfied with this system. The vendor was always very accommodating and often was little more than a phone call away. However, there were always the nagging realisations that Hunterdon would not necessarily be the vendor's priority and what could happen if Hunterdon suffered a real disaster. Hunterdon, Mamary explained, would always have to compete with the vendor's other customers, which could cost precious time. "I wouldn't know where we'd be on the totem pole," he said.
Then Hunterdon installed its critical information systems, a development Mamary said was a "big turning point." That change came as Hunterdon continued to grow and that growth brought its own issues. "As we grew, the expenses grew as well," he said. The old backup and recovery system was no longer the best option.
Hunterdon officials soon were mulling the value of a hot site and this led a few years ago to a business impact analysis study, in which Hunterdon officials looked into what would happen if their systems went down or became unavailable.
Benefits of a remote facility
Hunterdon had a number of options. They could contract out but that would be expensive. They could build onto what they already had in place but the existing procedures and systems already were inadequate and adding on would make them cumbersome. So Hunterdon began testing and finalising plans to develop the hot site, using in-house manpower and resources. They soon found that, done this way, the hot site not only became a disaster survival and recovery location but also could be used for training and other purposes, Mamary said.
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