Top 2 Benefits of Maximizing Storage Efficiency in Healthcare With a MSP

Healthcare providers are gaining confidence in moving their critical workloads, such as their electronic medical records (EMR) — Epic in most cases — to public clouds, like Azure and AWS instead of on-premises infrastructure.

Historically, security and concerns about loss of control have made healthcare providers hesitate to move their critical workloads to the cloud. After all, some application providers haven’t always certified their applications to run in the cloud.

Much of this has changed now, but scaling storage solutions can require more resources than some IT teams have available. That’s when a managed services provider (MSP) comes into play. Let’s explore the top two benefits of utilizing a MSP and a few points to consider if your IT team is seeking to hire one.

1. Proactive Capacity Planning and Reporting for Your Storage Environment

Without proper monitoring, a healthcare organization nearing the threshold utilization of a storage device could face serious consequences. If additional storage is not added, it could disrupt clinicians and practitioners, rendering them unable to store critical patient information. This lack of access to vital data could hinder their ability to make informed decisions about medication administration, patient allergies and potential reactions, highlighting the importance of a MSP for your storage needs.

 A MSP like CDW can provide proactive capacity planning and reporting using tools like Galileo to measure your environment's thresholds. Suppose you want to be notified when your storage capacity reaches 80% utilization; you’ll not only be made aware of it, but you will also receive suggestions on how much additional storage to add based on your use. This proactive approach ensures you are always prepared and never caught off guard due to insufficient storage.

2. Enhanced Business Storage Solutions and Cost Benefits With Specialized Expertise

A MSP should have dedicated storage and server engineers. After all, you don’t want a jack of all trades and master of none. The team handling your storage should consist of experts focused solely on their respective technology domains, such as IT storage servers, partner-specific solutions and more.

For example, CDW engineers exclusively focus on the technology platforms they support. Due to IT cost constraints and skills shortages, an IT team may have one individual performing multiple roles who may not know the latest updates and changes associated with your organization’s platform. With a limited capacity to proactively manage all essential details, there is a risk of tools not being correctly deployed in this scenario.

While some IT leaders may try to compare additional headcount to hiring a MSP, it’s important not to because a MSP provides access to technology and a team of individuals who can provide around-the-clock support for your organization’s entire storage environment.

MSPs like CDW also provide an account manager and a governance structure to drive standardization, processes and procedures around an incident when a device goes down. It’s one thing to receive an alert from the reporting tools; it’s another to have an effective way to resolve the incident and conduct a root cause analysis to ensure it doesn’t happen again. That’s another immediate cost benefit a MSP provides.

Regarding the labor a MSP provides, it's important to note that not all MSPs use their company-badged experts. Some use contracted labor, which may be able to complete the job in certain cases, but they may not always meet the same standards and expertise level of a company-badged employee.

If your team is trying to justify whether hiring a MSP to manage your workload is appropriate or if you’re already sifting through a list of providers, here are a few things to consider:

Critical workloads warrant additional support. Applications like Epic that house information essential for healthcare organizations to run are considered critical workloads. Every industry, like healthcare, has critical workload(s) it can’t operate without. For the financial services sector, it’s banking applications, and for retailers, it’s their transaction systems. In healthcare, a major risk aversion to losing critical patient information warrants 24/7 support.

A MSP should specialize in your industry and the applications you use. When selecting a MSP, it’s imperative that whichever one you choose is familiar with your industry, the vernacular used in the healthcare environment and the impact applications have on the clinician. When applications like Epic have a monopoly in the EMR space, your MSP must understand how to use it and ensure your environment is configured and optimized to run as effectively as possible. This will help you measure and achieve Epic’s Honor Roll and reap its benefits.

CDW has specialized managed services expertise in healthcare, and our account representatives are required to obtain additional certifications specific to healthcare. CDW has a team of healthcare strategists who are former practitioners, such as CIOs, CTOs, data scientists and architects, who have worked within healthcare systems. They are business professionals who complement our technology experts.

Our healthcare strategists work with healthcare providers to bring forward relevant solutions, which is why CDW has made significant investments to support the evolving trends in the healthcare marketplace.

Comprehensive change management is essential. Press for details about a MSP’s knowledge of change management and their capabilities. When administering changes to a system, it’s important to consider the downstream impact on other ancillary applications and the potential for negative ramifications elsewhere in the environment. There is a structured approach to implementing changes to avoid negative consequences. That’s why CDW utilizes ITIL-based processes to effectively drive standardization across unique environments and improve operational maturity.

CDW Managed Services has the expertise to assist your healthcare organization throughout your entire lifecycle, from managing an existing on-premises environment to developing a strategy for moving workloads to the cloud, executing that strategy and ultimately managing the chosen cloud environment for the client.

For more information on how CDW Managed Services can support your IT department, visit our website or call 800-800-4239.