Cisco Unified Computing System Case Study

1 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Kalispell Regional Medical Center Leads Way with First Deployment of Cisco UCS to Manage MEDITECH Electronic Medical Records SystemPath-breaking implementation on track to become model for entire country

HIGHLIGHTS

CUSTOMER PROFILE

•Client Name: Kalispell Regional Medical Center

•Region: Northwestern Montana

• Industry: Health Care

BUSINESS GOALS

•Consolidate its computing network and storage access into a comprehensive system

• Improve patient tracking, treatments, and outcomes

• Increase uptime and lower costs

•Update clinical software processing capability to boost system responsive- ness to physicians and clinicians

SOLUTION

•Cisco Unified Computing System

•VMware VSphere

•Cisco Nexus 7000 Series switches

•Cisco IronPort

RESULTS

•Greatly increased system access performance and reduced processing time

•Ensured uninterrupted uptime for electronic medical record system

•Substantially improved the overall performance of the network

• Improved server scalability to keep pace with growing demand

•Solved space, storage and expenditure issues by eliminating the need to continually add more servers

•Lowered total cost of ownership by simplifying port infrastructure

Business ChallengeKalispell is the largest city and commercial center in northwestern Montana near Glacier National Park. For the 91,000 residents of the Flathead County, Kalispell Regional Medical Center (KRMC) stands for combining community service with the highest quality of care. Each year, KRMC provides millions of dollars of charity care and community programs to local residents and makes up for tens of thousands of dollars a year in reimbursement shortfalls.

To sustain its good works — and fulfill its motto of “Exceptional Technology, Compassionate Care” — KRMC is continually looking for ways to lower costs and improve its delivery of care.

In 2010, it began reexamining the underlying IT architecture of its electronic medical records system, which employs MEDITECH’s software solution.

2 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

KRMC’s assessment revealed the growing limitations and inefficiencies of its legacy IT environment. These included:

• Limited data processing capacity

• Sprawling data center footprint

• Poor coordination among servers

• Costly cycles of spending on new servers

• Bottlenecks created by slow application performance

To remedy these inefficiencies and build a sustainable IT environment, KRMC’s IT leaders realized the medical center needed to consolidate and standardize its IT environment. By reducing system variations and complexities — and minimizing “version control” between servers — KRMC could prevent system downtime, accelerate data recovery when necessary, and streamline server setup and upgrades. The move would both keep costs under control and ensure uninterrupted access to vital medical records. “We were in a situation where we were running out of capacity — demand was exceeding supply,” says David Pape, Interim Director of IT at KRMC. “We were long overdue for a technology refresh with an organized approach to our data center solution.”

Solution and OutcomesRecognizing the advantages of a unified IT infrastructure for its MEDITECH software solution, KRMC decided to simultaneously update and move the solution from an outmoded, disjointed patchwork of legacy servers to Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS). Cisco UCS is designed as a single virtual blade chassis that incorporates and scales across multiple blade chassis, rack-mount servers, and racks. The result is a self-integrating, self-aware system.

Cisco UCS is the industry’s first converged data center platform utilizing VMware virtualization technology deployment — and KRMC the first major U.S. health care provider to adopt this integrated, next-generation platform for managing medical records. IT leaders at KRMC say that its path-breaking implementation could serve as a model for the entire country.

Improved Uptime for ProvidersClearly the biggest beneficiaries of the new system are the health care providers who rely on it for medical and patient information. Because UCS simplifies application management and scales more easily, problems related to scheduled maintenance downtime, episodic slow performance due to a lack of interconnectedness, and conflicts over version control between servers were all but eliminated. “Ensuring uptime is of enormous value to our caregivers,” Pape says. “We have to be connected all the time to fully serve our physicians, clinicians, and patients.”

Greater IT CapacityThe converged, virtualized UCS platform has proven to be a major boon to KRMC’s IT department, which was under constant pressure to supply more server hardware and CPU capacity — pressures that were intensified by a lack of space, money, and personnel. “We had huge data center capacity issues,” Pape admits. “We were rapidly counting down the days to maximum capacity.”

“We basically consolidated three different environments and architectures on a single-host environment. We are building a much more reliable platform and environment, one that is much easier to manage with Cisco UCS.” — David Pape, Interim Director of IT, Kalispell Regional Medical Center

3 © 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Instead of continually adding physical servers, Cisco UCS consolidated and virtualized the existing infrastructure, saving space and lowering total cost of ownership. “We are looking at a significant reduction with UCS,” Pape says. “Blade architecture significantly reduces space requirements,” adding that he is averaging 20 virtual servers on a blade.

Streamlined Hardware FootprintSince the move to Cisco UCS, KRMC’s IT department has seen a reduction in power usage and a 66% drop in the amount of space needed to house servers. “We are seeing a four- or five-to-one reduction in racks,” Pape says. As KRMC continue to leverage virtualization technology to shrink its hardware footprint, the IT department is expecting to cut its energy consumption further, which will qualify it for cash incentives from the local utility company. Managers say that incentives of more than $200K are available from utilities as part of programs that encourage businesses to develop innovative ways to reduce energy consumption.

“Utility companies are similarly reaching maximum capacity. They all have programs incentivizing organizations to take a hard look at their infrastructure and develop ways to reduce consumption into the future. The Cisco UCS platform is a fantastic tool for achieving those goals,” Pape says.

Faster Deployments, Better PerformanceThe efficient UCS-based data center allows KRMC to create server profiles that help administrators deploy and provision new blade servers in a fraction of the time — from 3 weeks to 1 hour on average.

The move also has significantly boosted data-processing performance, with IT managers noting a 2-8 times increase in system speed after the UCS deployment. That has led to faster delivery of information and reports. For example, one set of reports that used to take all night to run can now be delivered in less than an hour. “I received a call from the lab manager who was ecstatic the day following deployment when she realized her processing time was reduced five-fold,” Pape says.

More Efficient Disaster RecoveryThe IT department also saw huge efficiency gains in its disaster recovery operations. “We basically consolidated three different environments and architectures on a single-host environment,” Pape says. “We are building a much more reliable platform and environment, one that is much easier to manage with UCS.”

Boost in Application PerformanceIT managers have reported substantially better performance of its MEDITECH application since migrating to the unified computing platform. A key data-archiving procedure for admissions information, for example, now takes about an hour to run compared to 4-5 hours in the old environment; and a monthly billing and receivables reporting process that used to take more than 8 hours has been reduced to about 5.5 hours.

Better performance also means that ongoing background jobs are less likely to trigger alerts. “Several background jobs in MEDITECH used to alert us every night because they ran long enough to hit a threshold,” an IT manager reported. “Now they don’t.”

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Getting Ahead of DemandOverall, adopting Cisco UCS supports KRMC’s goal of moving to a hyper-visor based virtualized IT model that leverages products such as VMware. With the UCS implementation, KRMC’s expects to virtualize 90% of its infrastructure within a year.

The result is that for the first time, KRMC’s IT department can easily meet demand for server capacity and create a cushion to accommodate future growth. “Our goal is to always be ahead of demand or at least six months in front of the organization. Cisco UCS allows us to reach that goal,” Pape says.

National ShowcaseGetting ahead of demand — indeed, getting ahead in general — remains the overall objective for the entire medical center, from the IT department outward. “There are dynamic changes in healthcare all the time,” Pape acknowledges. “IT needs to keep up and be the enabler for change. My inherent goal is to improve the delivery of patient care while driving the bottom line through technology.”

With its stated mission of “Exceptional Technology,” Kalispell is an ideal place for a forward-looking project like running its MEDITECH software solution on Cisco UCS. As the U.S. moves toward mandatory electronic records access for all patients, and hospitals struggle to find ways to deliver care on leaner budgets, Kalispell’s innovative system could provide a blueprint for the nation — as well as greater service to the community.

“We are always focused on delivering better care and achieving a higher level of patient outcomes,” Pape says. “All our technology should be in the service of improving efficiencies and demonstrating value for patients and providers. Moving to Cisco UCS allows us to anticipate six months ahead of the organization and have enough computing on hand to support almost anything coming down the road.”

For More InformationVisit our sites to learn more about Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and its industry awards.

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS):

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10265/index.html

Industry awards:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/ps10265/industry_benchmarks.html#~industry_recognition

“Our goal is to always be ahead of demand or at least six months in front of the organization. Cisco UCS allows us to reach that goal.” — David Pape, Interim Director of IT, Kalispell Regional Medical Center