CASE STUDY: HEALTHCARE

In 2013, a cancer treatment center needed to replace their IT infrastructure. At the time, the healthcare provider man-aged their backup and disaster recovery solution on site. The cost of managing the solution had more than doubled as the number of patients increased. The IT staff needed help to managed cost and meet compliance requirements and began searching for a team of third-party experts to manage their infrastructure and still deliver much needed MRI screening for their patients.

“Like every healthcare company, their number one priority was ensuring they were HIPAA compliant,” said IPR Secure’s Vice President of Client Experience. “But at the same time, this IT team also needed to replace a solution that was quickly becoming unsustainable from a cost perspective.”

As the company began their search for a new managed service provider, they needed to find a partner that al-lowed them to meet their compliance requirements, estab-lish a business continuity plan, and implement strategic cost management. The IT team approached IPR Secure because of IPR’s depth of expertise in protecting, securing, and recovering healthcare data.

EVOLVING A SECURE AND ROBUST DATA MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

Initially, this cancer treatment center had an immediate need for data backup services from IPR. The IT team need-ed to ensure a particularly sensitive data base was backed up offsite. Shortly thereafter, the cancer treatment cen-ter approached IPR about adding Storage as a Service to maintain their long-term data retention requirements.

“As this cancer treatment center saw more and more patients, they accumulated more data,” said IPR Secure. “Adding a Storage as a Service solution helped address

the increasing volume of data and provided the flexibil-ity needed to store and access data images quickly and easily.”

When IPR began working with this company it was one of several vendors providing services. One platform the IT team was using was a Dell product called VirtuStream. Recently, this cancer facility conducted a routine audit and discovered the product had been discontinued without no-tification from the vendor. Several months’ worth of data

AFTER UNEXPECTEDLY FALLING OUT OF COMPLIANCE, THIS MID-SIZED HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATION TURNED TO LONG-TERM PARTNER IPR SECURE

had not been backed up properly, and as a result the facility had fallen out of compliance through no fault of its own. The IT team began approaching new vendors about ways to implement a new solution to bring their infrastructure back into compliance.

“After evaluating several vendors including IPR, this cancer treatment provider eventually chose IPR Secure because our team was the sole vendor to sit down with their team to understand their unique requirements and plan a new solution,” said IPR Secure. “IPR’s approach is to ask questions, architect a complete solution, and discuss the solution with everyone involved so each stakeholder feels the requirements are met before proceeding.”

IPR DEVELOPS A CUSTOM SOLUTION, DELIVERS FAST IMPLEMENTATION AND ONGOING PROTECTION

One of the reasons this provider came to IPR is because of IPR’s specialization in serving mid-sized healthcare companies. Having many clients who need to meet healthcare compliance regulations, IPR is experienced in developing and maintaining HIPPA compliant solutions. One of the reasons this provider stayed with IPR is because of the strategic guidance provided to support those solutions.

IPR Secure was able to provide a solution that brought this team’s infrastructure into compliance immediately without capital expense. Then, IPR deployed standard project management professional certified principles to manage the implementation from start to finish, providing a timeline, weekly updates, and ongoing side-by-side collaboration.

“After we provided professional services to architect the solution, we documented the solution to bring everyone onto the same page, provided the professional services to implement the solution properly, and tested it to ensure it functioned as expected,” said IPR Secure. “We continue to monitor the solution on an ongoing basis to track successful backups and maintain proper thresholds. This approach is part of the standard offering from IPR.”

To date, this facility has relied on IPR Secure to protect and secure critical data for six years without incident. IPR’s solutions have enabled this IT team to ensure their compliance requirements were met at the outset of the engagement. Additionally, this provider has also turned to IPR to migrate their DR as a Service solution to IPR after the previous provider’s bankruptcy announcement.

“After protecting and securing this organization’s sensitive data for 6 years, we were honored they came to IPR to ask for strategic guidance,” said IPR Secure. “It is a great testament to the relationship and the trust we have built with each other that they continue to rely on IPR for data storage guidance.”