At Genesys Regional Medical Center, part of the Ascension Health system,doctors, nurses,
and clinicians waited for time on shared computers, thenspent much of that time logging on to the system and to various applications.Symantec Endpoint Virtualization Suite provides 10-second startups that openall the applications users need, and one-keystroke suspensions that allow auser to return to the exact same session on a different device. Security andcompliance are improved, and doctors find their daily rounds take two hoursless. Genesys is now rolling the ap
plication out to 700 doctors, resulting in a33% decrease in the amount of time it takes to conduct patient rounds.
Coping with EMR s
Electronic Medical Records. No technology in recent history has had such an impact on the wayhealthcare providers do their work. Paper-based patient information is largely a thing of the past.The data is now stored digitally, and accessed and updated by multiple doctors, nurses, andfacility staff throughout the course of a patient’s treatment. With improved information sharingamong care providers and staff, the risk of adverse drug interactions are reduced, and practitionerscan offer better care.
EMRs mean healthcare professionals must change the way they use computers. Most medicalsettings are unlike the typical office where each user is assigned his or her own computer, andworks at it all day. Instead, staff members typically share computers, signing in to view a recordor test result, and then leaving again. This is especially true in hospitals, where doctors mustaccess EMRs in many different locations during their rounds.
Squatter’s Rights
With electronic records and medical images now available in digital form, most healthcare professionalsneed to spend more time in front of computers than ever before, and that has causedheadaches for hospitals and health facilities across the country, including Genesys RegionalMedical Center in Grand Blanc, Michigan, part of the Ascension Health system.
“Squatting was a by-product of EMRs that Ididn’t anticipate,” says Dan Stross, CIO atGenesys Regional Medical Center. “Theproblem was that once staff members wereat a PC, they would often try to stake a claimto what was expected to be a sharedcomputer.”
Though the hospital would discouragesquatting, the behavior was understandable:it took at least three minutes to log onwith a user ID and private password, thenopen and log on to several different applicationsthat many doctors and nurses use simultaneously.Once they’d gone to all thiseffort, they were reluctant to let someoneelse take over the computer, and have tostart over from scratch next time theyneeded to use one—if they could find a freecomputer at all.
“It was probably an even bigger problemjust finding a computer,” notes KennethYokosawa, M.D., Family Medicine Residencyprogram director at Genesys. “When roundingat peak times, when all the residentswere working, and maybe medical students,nursing students, nurses, and other staffmembers as well, there was always a congestionof users trying to get to a workstation.That included physicians. I’d lookaround a while for a workstation, and thenwhen I found one, it took a long time to logon and reopen all those applications.”
Keeping the Focus on Patient Care
The Genesys IT team felt sure that desktop virtualization could solve these problems by speeding up log-ins and sign-offs and easing the competition for computer time, giving doctors, nurses, and clinicians more time for patient care. To find out, the hospital began with a proof of concept facilitated by its technology partner, Milford, Michigan based Coretek Services. The team evaluateds olutions from Citrix, Sun, Imprivata, andVMWare and Symantec™ Endpoint Virtualization Suite with Symantec™ Workspace Corporate and running on Wyse thin clients.
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