CONFERENCING

From the February 2004  issue of Communications News

Hospital enhances services


LifeCare CIO Zeke Zoccoli uses the hospital’s videoconferencing network for a discussion with another staff member.

Service provider offerings facilitate implementation of videoconferencing capabilities.

With 21 long-term acute care facilities across the United States, LifeCare Hospitals provides essential medical care to more than 12,000 patients a year suffering from complex health problems. The typical short-term patient spends three days in the hospital, while LifeCare’s patients require an average of 25 days in the acute-care setting. LifeCare’s founder and former intensive care nurse, Ann George, designed the facility to allow for the best bedside patient care available. This approach requires a transdisciplinary team of skilled professionals offering a personalized treatment plan to quickly and effectively encourage the patient’s recovery. 

With this mission in place, LifeCare’s CIO, Zeke Zoccoli, and his team had to recreate the organization’s IT infrastructure to support this hands-on clinical care. His goal was to leverage his unused bandwidth for new applications, streamline hospital processes and decrease operational expenses so more time and money could be dedicated to developing and implementing clinical- and patient-care applications.

Zoccoli began his search for an expanded network in 2002. Previously, LifeCare was using several large, well-known providers for its services. Because of the disparate nature of the services, LifeCare was paying for unused capacity and could not leverage the efficiencies of convergence. This concerned Zoccoli, as did the fact that many of these service providers were experiencing serious business problems.

“I needed a bigger, faster network, but I obviously had reservations about dealing with organizations that were laying off thousands of employees at a time,” says Zoccoli. “I not only needed enhanced network services, but I wanted one-on-one customer service, not just an automated phone line if I had issues.”

After six months of analyzing competitive network service offerings, Zoccoli chose MASERGY to provide a total network solution using its inCONTROL Private IP and inCONTROL video products. The MASERGY network leverages native MPLS-based IP to deliver five classes of service across secure network connections, backed by industry-leading service-level agreements to guarantee site-to-site quality of service.

“The conversion was so seamless, our CFO didn’t know we had completed the migration to our new carrier,” says Zoccoli. 

The new network was implemented within 60 days and went live in February 2003. 

“In business, if there is a ‘C’ in the title, such as CEO or COO, he or she wants to hear about how you’re saving the company money, not spending on big ticket items,” says Zoccoli. “What most people don’t realize is that just about every CIO in the United States is sitting on unused capacity that can be tapped with the right service provider.” 

So Zoccoli began leveraging his existing bandwidth to add converged services to his network without further investment.

“You’re already paying for the pipe; now use it for multiple things,” he says. 

With LifeCare’s new network–or “debris-free road” as Zoccoli calls it–in place, he began encouraging his internal IT staff and regional CIOs to leverage the system to its fullest extent by developing applications that could drive company efficiency. 

A combination of MASERGY capabilities, internally developed applications and commercial software were deployed to offer new efficiencies, such as:

  • facilitating staff training;
  • streamlining hospital operational and patient-care activities;
  • simplifying hospital reimbursement;
  • authenticating physician credentials;
  • modernizing patient records; and
  • verifying medical coding.

Zoccoli and his team wanted the company to adopt videoconferencing to eliminate unneeded travel expenses and encourage interaction among its nationwide staff. LifeCare executives demanded the best video reception on each conference, and utilizing the old infrastructure was not an option due to poor quality.

“Videoconferencing has been around for quite a while, but what many people don’t realize is that TV-like quality is now available,” Zoccoli says. “By utilizing our existing bandwidth, we were able to offer our videoconferencing on an ‘all you can meet basis.’”

LifeCare’s Terry Sanders is now leveraging the videoconferencing service for staff training that is secure and compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Recently, the organization conducted its wound-care training sessions in only two days vs. the 45 days it would take to send a training team to all facilities. The medical personnel attended the training without leaving the hospital and then immediately returned to work. This service helps ensure the hospital’s transdisciplinary team is always trained on the latest procedures, and able to tap talent and expertise across all hospital locations.

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