Troubleshooting EHR and system issues at HealthWorks of Northern Virginia used to involve up to five different vendors. It was a nightmare. By moving to eClinlcalWorks’ cloud-EHR, they eliminated many of their system issues and now only have one vendor to deal with. Contrary to the prevailing belief, HealthWorks’ gained MORE control of their environment by moving to the cloud.
Healthcare IT Today had the chance to sit down with Jesse Burke, Director of IT at HealthWorks for Northern Virginia to have a conversation about their migration to the cloud. During our conversation we busted a few myths about moving to the cloud.
HealthWorks is a federally qualified health center (FQHC) that provides health services in some of the wealthiest areas of the United States – Loudoun and Fairfax County. Burke says that it may seem odd to have an FQHC in those counties, but there is a hidden community there that need the services that HealthWorks provides. Also, because many of their patients work in those counties, having facilities there makes it more convenient for them.
Too Many IT Service Partners
There was an acute need for HealthWorks to move to a cloud-based system and to simplify their IT environment. According to Burke, for years HealthWorks had struggled to deal with several third-party IT service providers who were contracted with various community health centers to manage their technology infrastructure.
On a one-off basis, having a trust third-party to maintain servers, update software and troubleshoot issues was a smart move for smaller healthcare organizations who could not afford full time IT staff. However, when different partners are servicing different aspects of the infrastructure, it can become challenging to quickly resolve issues. Finger-pointing becomes the norm.
That is what happened at HealthWorks.
“We started with a single third-party service provider,” said Burke. “But at some point they decided to outsource some operations to another party and that party then outsourced part of their service to someone who was more specialized. I would have to place a ticket with eClinicalWorks who would have to reach out to our care community network help desk, and they would’ve to reach out to the server people and then they would have to reach out to their specialty people. There were five people that had to be involved for us to get access to one thing on our servers.”
This was not sustainable, especially with an IT Department of 1 (Burke himself).
Moving to eClinicalWorks Cloud
It was almost a no-brainer for HealthWorks to move to the eClinicalWorks cloud-based EHR and away from their on-prem version. This would not only make the system easier to maintain, it would also reduce the number of parties that needed to be involved in troubleshooting issues.
Instead of having to coordinate between five different service partners, Burke could not simply call the eClinicalWorks help desk and they would take care of the problem.
“Placing a ticket of any kind is so much easier now,” shared Burke. “It’s just one party now and we connect easily.”
The transition to the cloud version went very smoothly, thanks to a combination of good planning, expert support from the eClinicalWorks team, and a set of electronic dashboards that the team used to manage the entire process.
“I would suggest to anyone in a similar situation that I was in – move to the cloud quickly, you won’t regret it,” stated Burke. “You are making the right choice to go to the cloud because everything is going there. It’s been great and our physicians can access the system anywhere as long as they have access to the internet.”
Watch the interview with Jesse Burke to learn:
- How managing user accounts and authentication became so much easier after moving to the cloud
- Why automated content updates to the EHR are such a benefit to HealthWorks
Learn more about HealthWorks for Northern Virginia at https://hwnova.org/
Learn more about eClinicalWorks at https://www.eclinicalworks.com/
eClinicalWorks is a sponsor of Healthcare Scene
