Business need Elmcroft Senior Living has doubled in size since its 2006 founding and needed to consolidate a fragmented data infrastructure across 102 facilities in 19 states. Solution Elmcroft Senior Living improved service delivery while saving IT costs and time by consolidating its infrastructure with Dell end-to-end solutions, from its backbone network to universal WiFi and point-of-care carts. Benefits • Improves service delivery with point- of-care patient data for medical staff • Provides ubiquitous and more secure WiFi access for patients, residents and staff • Consolidates and standardizes data infrastructure, easing administrative burden • Eliminates IT travel time for troubleshooting infrastructure issues • Saves as much as $200,000 in IT labor costs and up to 50 percent in equipment costs Solutions featured • Application Virtualization • Networking • Servers • Storage Consolidated infrastructure improves senior care Elmcroft Senior Living improved IT service delivery and security while saving costs and time by consolidating and standardizing its infrastructure with an end-to-end Dell solution. “In all, our company is saving $200,000 a year in IT labor costs through the greater efficiency enabled by Dell’s integrated end-to-end solutions.” Ray Sands, Senior Technical Analyst, Elmcroft Senior Living Customer profile Company Elmcroft Senior Living, Inc. Industry Healthcare Country United States Employees 7,500 Website www.elmcroftsenior living.com
Transcript
Business need
Elmcroft Senior Living has doubled
in size since its 2006 founding and
needed to consolidate a fragmented
data infrastructure across 102 facilities
in 19 states.
Solution
Elmcroft Senior Living improved service
delivery while saving IT costs and time
by consolidating its infrastructure with
Dell end-to-end solutions, from its
backbone network to universal WiFi and
point-of-care carts.
Benefits• Improves service delivery with point-
of-care patient data for medical staff
• Provides ubiquitous and more secure
WiFi access for patients, residents
and staff
• Consolidates and standardizes data
infrastructure, easing administrative
burden
• Eliminates IT travel time for
troubleshooting infrastructure issues
• Saves as much as $200,000 in IT
labor costs and up to 50 percent in
equipment costs
Solutions featured• Application Virtualization
• Networking
• Servers
• Storage
Consolidated infrastructure improves senior careElmcroft Senior Living improved IT service delivery and security while saving costs and time by consolidating and standardizing its infrastructure with an end-to-end Dell solution.
“In all, our company is saving $200,000 a year in IT labor costs through the greater efficiency enabled by Dell’s integrated end-to-end solutions.”
Ray Sands, Senior Technical Analyst, Elmcroft Senior Living
“It’s really nice to know that Dell has tested the interoperability of its portfolio, and I can call one number to resolve any issues across it.”
Ray Sands, Senior Technical Analyst, Elmcroft Senior Living
Merging four established firms presented integration issues that the company’s IT team worked hard to address, while meeting the considerable day-to-day needs of a rapidly growing company. Senior Technical Analyst Ray Sands sums up the nature of those issues: “We had four separate everything — data centers, networks, billing systems and ways of doing things.”
Challenges to consolidating an infrastructure that supports EMRWhen Elmcroft opened its doors, operating the disparate IT systems was like running four separate and unique businesses — a lot of extra work. “Much of what we’ve been doing since we opened our doors has been getting our systems standardized, getting on one system, making our infrastructure sound and dealing with rapid growth,” he says. “Ultimately our top challenge is, are we ready for the future?”
Another challenge facing Elmcroft is deploying an electronic medical records (EMR) system for its many thousands of patients and residents. Today, Elmcroft relies mostly on paper records, although two sites are piloting EMR and more are planned. Inadequate infrastructure has slowed its adoption. “If you don’t have strong internet connectivity, or the necessary wireless network, you really can’t do EMR.”
Elmcroft Senior Living also faces many new regulatory challenges. It must
In 2006, four firms offering senior care services across 19 states
merged to form one company named Elmcroft Senior Living.
Today, from its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, the company
operates 102 senior communities, including four multilevel retirement
communities and 19 health and rehabilitation centers.
Technology at work
Services
Dell Deployment Services
Dell Support Services
- Dell ProSupport
Hardware
Dell Compellent SC220 flash-optimized SAN storage
Dell Compellent SC8000 controller
Dell EqualLogic SAN storage
Dell Networking C300 chassis-based switches
Dell Networking 5500 Series switches
Dell Networking 6200 Series switches
Dell Networking S4810 GbE switches
Dell Networking S25 and S50 GbE switches
Dell Networking W-Series instant access points
Dell PowerEdge M1000e blade enclosures
Dell PowerEdge servers
Dell PowerVault storage
Dell Latitude laptops
Dell OptiPlex desktops
Dell Point-of-Care solutions using
OptiPlex 7010 PCs
Software
Citrix® XenApp®
Citrix XenServer®
Dell KACE K1000 and K2000 System Management Appliances
comply with Medicare’s maze of rules and regulations, in order to get paid for many if not most of the services it provides. Meanwhile, it must conform to a complex set of patient privacy and security regulations set forth in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and provisions of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.
A complete enterprise solution — at up to 50 percent lower cost — from DellWhen Elmcroft’s IT team first began evaluating vendors and their portfolios several years ago, they had no idea that Dell’s range of product offerings was so broad. “At the time we thought of Dell as just your basic PC, laptop, and server provider.” Sands says, noting Elmcroft Senior Living’s first SAN trial with Dell EqualLogic storage. “But the more we researched Dell, the more we realized how many solutions Dell had for us in its enterprise portfolio.”
Sands has found a lot of value in sole-sourcing with Dell. A big benefit is avoiding the blame game and finger-pointing that comes with a multivendor supplier base. “It’s really nice to know that Dell has tested the interoperability of its portfolio, and I can call one number to resolve any issues across it.”
Knowledgeable sales force adds value to Dell’s portfolioAnother advantage he sees in Dell is its knowledgeable sales force and its willingness to consult throughout the sales cycle. “Other vendors say they’ll help you do this and that, but it always comes down to a sales engagement,” he says. “Our experience is that Dell provides more presales support than any other company. The engineers are fantastic. They’ll help you plan and design something down to the last detail, so you know exactly what you’re doing, and you’re not buying something that fails to fulfill the purpose you purchased it for.”
In assessing other vendors, Sands noticed that Dell always offered the most value. For example, compared with HP, he found Dell’s prices average about 20 percent less; with Cisco, he found that Dell’s prices average about 50 percent less. In fact, he discovered that not only are Cisco switches much more expensive than their Dell Networking counterparts but they also use a lot of the same code and modules. “I can save a lot of money,” he says, “but I can still use all my Cisco knowledge and training when I buy Dell’s switches.”
Building a common infrastructure for future growthThe trial using Dell EqualLogic SAN storage with a variety of server models started the build-out of a common data infrastructure for Elmcroft that’s now centralized in a single data center at the company’s Louisville headquarters. Technologies such as thin provisioning, advanced tiering, deduplication and compression all help to optimize the data center’s performance and utilization.
In addition, Elmcroft owns Dell’s PowerVault and Compellent storage, most recently deploying the Dell Compellent SC220 flash-optimized array with 200GB and 400GB of populated SLC solid state drives. The SC220 enclosure delivers flash storage at a cost per gigabyte that is comparable to traditional disk storage. In addition, it has 90 percent less latency and requires 84 percent less space. Of the 35TB of storage that it now has, Elmcroft Senior Living is using only half, so the IT team is well on its way to getting the company “ready for future growth.”
Boosting data center processing powerFor processing power, Elmcroft has deployed a range of both Dell PowerEdge rack and blade servers, with a move toward more blade servers using the Dell PowerEdge
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M1000e blade chassis. Connecting all of Elmcroft Senior Living’s facilities with its data center is a Layer-3 backbone network built on 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). They have also implemented Dell Networking 5500 and 6200 Series switches at the company’s remote sites. “Dell Networking is fast and efficient,” Sands says. “When we have a major problem that looks complex, we call our friends at Dell ProSupport and get help quickly. For example, in the past year, our switching went sideways on us, but within 10 minutes a Dell technician was going through the logs with me, and we found the problem and resolved it.”
At the data center, Elmcroft is using Dell Networking S25, S50 GbE and S4810 GBE switches and C300 chassis-based switches, interconnected with fiber. “Before we had Cisco infrastructure with stacked switches that were always overwhelmed and saturated,” he says. “So we replaced them with a single Dell Networking C300 chassis-based switch and found that our internal latency virtually disappeared.”
Elmcroft adds that the Dell Networking C300 chassis-based switch cost 40 percent less than Cisco’s equivalent solution, and has performed superbly, experiencing no over-subscription. “In fact, as we’ve started using 10GbE on our backplane,” he says, “the C300 is still not over-subscribed. This tells me that Dell built it with the future in mind. Ultimately, it will save us tens of thousands of dollars in infrastructure costs by not having to buy new hardware to take advantage of emerging technology.”
Extending infrastructure’s reach to end usersElmcroft’s IT supports a range of users, from corporate and medical staff to patients, residents and guests. Depending on their roles and requirements, staff members are assigned either Dell OptiPlex desktop PCs or Dell Latitude laptops. All are backed up with Dell ProSupport,
as are all Elmcroft Senior Living’s servers. For patching, security, and updating, Elmcroft uses the Dell KACE K1000 and K2000 Systems Management Appliances. “The Dell KACE management appliances are fantastic and work flawlessly,” he says. “If we have a PC problem not related to hardware, we can just reimage it.”
Elmcroft uses Citrix® XenApp® and XenServer® for application virtualization and publishing, which provides users with on-demand access to the company’s enterprise applications including Microsoft Office 2010. To deliver those applications, he makes a gold image of Windows Server 2008 R2, where the applications reside. “We then create multiple virtual servers that live on the 10-gig backplane to the Dell Compellent SC220 flash-optimized array with users accessing the applications on those virtual servers,” he says. “Dell Deployment Services came on-site to help install and configure it all.”
Across all Elmcroft facilities as well as headquarters, Elmcroft’s IT department has deployed more than 300 Dell W-Series instant access points. He explains that the company’s previous WiFi implementation wasn’t enterprise-grade, so users were inadvertently exposing the network to frequent DNS or malware attacks. “Our technicians sometimes had to drive up to 200 miles to troubleshoot the network and bring it back up, before we deployed the Dell W-Series IAPs,” he says. “Now they don’t have to, because we can manage it all centrally.”
He explains that when the WiFi network’s security is compromised, the offending users are shut down and isolated, while the network stays up and running. “In addition,” he says, “we’re also able to run separate clinical, business and public wireless networks at each location for our different user types. This enables us to maintain the security we must have for HIPAA.”
“Our experience is that Dell provides more presales support than any other company. The engineers are fantastic. They’ll help you plan and design something down to the last detail.”
Ray Sands, Senior Technical Analyst, Elmcroft Senior Living
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Building toward an EMR tomorrow, from the data center to the bedside Elmcroft now has the combination of a consolidated data center, powerful 10GbE backbone network, and secure, enterprise-grade wireless access that it needs to build a comprehensive and regulations-compliant EMR system. “In all, our company is saving $200,000 a year in IT labor costs through the greater efficiency enabled by Dell’s integrated end-to-end solutions,” he says. “And we are saving another 25 to 50 percent each time we buy new Dell equipment when compared with the competition.”
To extend the system’s reach to patients’ bedsides, it has deployed 100 Dell point-of-care solutions. These cordless, wireless carts use a small form-factor Dell OptiPlex 7010 PC with touchscreens that give medical personnel secure and private access to a patient’s records. He adds that Dell Deployment Services helped to implement the carts where they’re being piloted, and he uses the Dell KACE management appliances to standardize the images on all the units.
The Dell point-of-care carts enable nurses to do all the patient’s charting at bedside, Sands says, instead of doing it by hand at the nurse’s station. The result: big savings in time, effort and less errors. What he considers even more important, however, are the analytical capabilities and insights that the carts can provide the medical staff. “With this new software and these carts, we’re able to keep an accurate record of all our patient’s numbers,” he says. “The software will help us see trends even before symptoms occur, which can help us intervene much sooner than we might otherwise. This can really help us proactively improve and protect the health of our residents. Ultimately, that’s what healthcare technology is all about.”
“Our technicians sometimes had to drive up to 200 miles to troubleshoot the network and bring it back up, before we deployed the Dell W-Series IAPs. Now they don’t have to, because we can manage it all centrally.”
Ray Sands, Senior Technical Analyst, Elmcroft Senior Living
