The transformation to value-based healthcare, which demands a move away from a supply-driven health care system that is organized around fees, toward a patient-centered system, organized around what patients need. The move is well underway and organizations are making large-scale changes to deliver on the efficiencies it promises. Moving to electronic-based medical records per the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) mandates put in place by the U.S. federal government is part of the equation as it adds the technologies that ultimately enable clinicians to be more efficient, allowing for more one-on-one time with patients and less time spent on documentation.

Montefiore Health System (MHS), a premier academic medical center, and the University Hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine adopted Citrix virtualization technology to adapt to this changing trend and comply with EMR mandates. MHS grew significantly over the course of three years, increasing its user base from 18,000 to a staggering 28,000 workers, which includes ten hospitals, an extended-care facility with 150 locations in New York state, the largest school health program and a home-health program.

As a result of this quick growth, the IT organization at MHS needed solutions that would give clinicians seamless access to the large number of patient medical records without impacting their growing care team’s ability to provide quality patient care. By using low-cost devices such as thin clients and keeping the complex configuration needs of different clinical applications contained within the data center, MHS has realized more than $5 million in hardware savings. 

To reach its goals, the IT group developed a strategy that uses Citrix XenApp, XenDesktop, and NetScaler to give thousands of remote workers access to clinical applications regardless of location. These Citrix solutions allowed MHS IT to complete the rollout of its EMR system, EPIC, in a staggering 12 months. To date, MHS has rolled out the EPIC system to almost 10,000 machines, with a focus on its medical group sites and faculty practices. MHS also kept storage costs low with Provisioning Services, saving more than $2 million in storage in addition to savings in manpower from single image management. 

With the visibility into XenApp and XenDesktop traffic across the network provided through HDX Insight, which is a part of NetScaler Insight Center, MHS created 24/7 monitoring capabilities which are essential in a round-the-clock healthcare setting in which clinicians need to provide on call responses. When a change is needed to any of the most popular apps used by clinicians, it can be made any time of day without interrupting their workflow. Today, whether it’s a doctor who needs to look up a patient’s test results while away on vacation or a clinician who can’t make it to a medical center because of inclement weather, Citrix solutions ensure reliable, secure access to pertinent patient records and time-sensitive test results.

“We were able to roll out the EPIC system and hundreds of standard apps to thousands of users on 10,000 machines in less than 12 months – a staggering feat. If we didn’t have Citrix solutions in place and I’d had to use another vendor or a manual process, we would probably have doubled the time to implementation. The result is better patient care delivered faster and without the expense of added manpower.” -- Corey Cush, Senior Director of Technology Services, Montefiore Health System