Innity Network Solutions

Upgrades, managed services help strengthen healthcare operations

Upgrades, managed services help strengthen healthcare operations Customer Prole

Piedmont Orthopaedic specializes in orthopedic surgery, sports medicine, occupational medicine and podiatry. The 38-person practice also has ambulatory therapy and orthopedic surgery centers in its Macon, Georgia, facility.

Situation
Since its founding in 1985, Piedmont Orthopaedic has established a reputation as a premier facility for helping individuals with work, sports, accident and other injuries overcome their problems and return to more normal, active lives. Quality communications among physicians, other medical personnel, staff and patients has been one of the keys to their success. Yet behind the scenes, Piedmont Orthopaedics communications technology was anything but healthy. Its voice, data and computing systems were in need of an upgrade especially with the government mandate for universal adoption of electronic health records (EHR) by 2014. Too much downtime was robbing staff of productivity. There was also another issue. We outsource the management of all of our technology, says Amanda Turner, ofce manager at Piedmont Orthopaedics. In this case, though, we had one supplier for voice, another for email, still another for desktop computing and so on. If a problem involved two technologies it could be difcult to track down and correct. It was very frustrating for our users. With nearly all the technology reaching the refresh cycle at once, Piedmont Orthopaedic wanted to nd a single rm that could upgrade the voice, data infrastructure and computing systems, and then manage all of it (including the user help desk) for the practice.

Solution
With no known candidates already in mind, Turner went to her local Chamber of Commerce. Thats where she met Robert C. Betzel, president of Innity Network Solutions, a Cisco Premier Certied partner. After an initial review of Piedmonts current state, Betzel and Innity recommended a number of upgrades, including moving to a Cisco Voice over IP (VoIP) phone system with unied communications, replacing servers as well as nearly all user computers, and

reinstalling 100 percent of the infrastructure equipment for voice and data. Innity also showed how its managed services practice could provide management of hardware, software and infrastructure through a single source.

Results
In November 2009, Innity Network Solutions began implementing the upgrades, most of which happened over a single weekend. Ofcials installed the Cisco Unied Communications 500 series for small business, SR520 secure routers, ASA security appliances and other technologies. They also moved the users to Cisco 7970 and 525G VoIP phones. Everything went very smoothly, Turner says. The learning curve for the ofce staff was very short, too. They went to the Innity Network Solutions ofce in small groups for training, and everyone got up to speed right away. In addition to the technology needs, another big consideration for Piedmont Orthopaedic was the cost. Thats where Innity Network Solutions was able to provide an innovative answer. Its Innity Technology Assurance Program (I-TAP), a proprietary IT rental program, allowed the practice to complete the upgrades for a near net-zero cost. And by Innity offering xed rather than per-use costs for the IT help desk, phone and network support, Piedmont Orthopedic is able to budget reliably instead of having to guess what IT support will cost each month. Turner is also happy that the upgrades included the capability for wireless networking. Once the doctors have selected the EHR system they want to use, Piedmont Orthopaedic plans to move to tablet computers. All theyll need to do is ip the switch and theyll be connected to the system. As for Innity Network Solutions, Turner says working with the rms associates is a real pleasure. Their management of the project was excellent, she says. Despite pretty much overhauling every technology we use, the change was seamless for our users. They made it look easy. Everyone from Robert and our account manager on down make themselves available to us whenever we need them, and the help desk people have been great. They were the right people for the job.

Innity Network Solutions, Inc.

Corporate Head Ofce: 93 Gateway Drive Macon, GA 31210

Phone: 478-475-9500 Toll-Free: 1-866-475-9510 Email: casestudies@innitynetworks.net