Building Out a Surgery Center’s IT Infrastructure and Systems from the Ground Up to Ensure Reliable, Secure Technology

Situation

A 6,500-square-foot Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) in Newington, New Hampshire, with two operating rooms and equipped with cutting-edge technology, providing professional, efficient care to the community at large. ASCs, also known as outpatient surgery centers, are health care facilities where surgical procedures are performed that do not require an overnight hospital stay, which can result in cost savings to the party responsible for patient’s health care payments.

Challenge

They were building a new center in the New England region and needed to make sure their technology was efficient and secure from the get go. They hired HDA Enterprises for their new construction and HDA invited us to partner with them again for this build out. (We’ve partnered with HDA on a number of new healthcare center construction projects in the past.)

Solution

We were involved from the beginning of the buildout so that we could review the blueprints and understand where everything was laid out, so that we could advise on the network design (i.e., where to put the network drops, computers, internet, phone lines, cabling, etc.). Then, we ordered the necessary equipment and installed the infrastructure.

Next it was time to get all the IT infrastructure and systems up and running. This included multiple rounds of testing and customizations to ensure that the technology worked optimally for the intended cases and end users.

Throughout the buildout process, we developed a disaster recovery plan and incorporated the necessary redundancies so the center could respond and recover quickly during an adverse event. This included a 4G failover in case of internet failure and a direct fiber connection between their location and a SOC 2 data center, which guarantees 99.99% uptime. (SOC 2, or Service Organization Control Type 2, is a cybersecurity compliance framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants [AICPA].)

Lastly, we increased their business resiliency and continuity by storing their data and servers in a SOC 2 datacenter. 

Results

The surgery center now has an efficient and secure IT infrastructure and systems to support day-to-day timely and important patient care. In addition, they have a disaster recovery plan and multiple fail safes in place to protect their operations and patient care in case of an adverse event. Lastly, they have ongoing IT Services support to help maintain stable and secure operations.