For almost 50 years, Multicare Associates has provided a wide array of primary care services.
An internal IT staff managed Multicare Associates’ IT environment for 30 providers and 200 staff across three locations. The in-house IT staff supported the primary care clinic’s users, applications, and their infrastructure. But CEO Matt Brandt had concerns about the practice’s aging IT environment and wanted to implement a new EHR solution.
He looked to cloud service providers to augment the clinic’s internal IT team.
Multicare Associates is among a growing group of practices that are partnering with cloud service providers in response to evolving healthcare regulations and the increasingly complex technology needed in practices today. Practices continue supporting their end users and focus on their strategy while leveraging cloud providers to fill critical gaps.
What’s the impact?
Ability to focus on key internal projects
Multicare Associates’ IT staff can now focus on internal projects, end user support, local hardware and many other areas while relying on Netgain to support their hosted enterprise applications. “Netgain has the kind of expertise that I can’t afford to have on staff,” Brandt said.
Immediate access to a team of experts
Netgain helps the clinic handle the complex requirement of healthcare IT. “Netgain teams up with our IT team to work through projects and they understand our needs. Without question, Netgain has exceeded our expectations,” said Peter Pha, IT Director at Multicare Associates.
“Immediate, high-end support is available when needed, and urgent matters are taken seriously,” Thomas Vue, IT Manager at Multicare Associates, said.
Ability to budget for the services needed
Netgain eliminated the need for the practice to make large capital investments into new servers. Instead, Multicare Associates can easily budget for their IT costs with a predictable monthly operating expense that can scale to keep pace with their growth needs.
Confidence in their IT environment
The clinic no longer has to worry about aging servers, Microsoft licensing updates, or security monitoring. Netgain manages the application upgrades, hardware, security patches, data storage, disaster recovery processes, and backup procedures.
Those not outsourcing healthcare IT soon will be in a small minority. The global healthcare IT outsourcing market is expected to achieve a 12 percent compound annual growth rate until 2020, according to research by Everest Group.
Multicare Associates is just one example of the many success stories practices have had by transitioning to a cloud service provider. In many cases, practices have an internal IT team but with the critical nature of healthcare IT, practices see the benefits in using a cloud service provider to augment their staff.
Does your practice’s IT team have gaps that need to be filled?