Hospice of the Bluegrass

“Systems Design Group is our IT department. With over 500 employees in nine locations we must have 7×24 access to a variety of applications including patient data. As part of the Hospice of the Bluegrass Team, SDG meets these challenges while helping me guide the IT future of our agency.”- Gretchen Brown, President & CEO

The Challenge:
Provide a mechanism for rapid communication between multiple service sites and make available essential patient care and operational data.

Hospice of the Bluegrass has over 500 employees located in nine offices in Central, Northern and Eastern Kentucky. Technology infrastructure and support services did not allow the fundamental communications and data sharing necessary to allow Hospice of the Bluegrass to quickly react to situations requiring collaboration among remotely dispersed staff.

The Systems Design Group, Inc. Solution:
A stable Wide Area Network supporting multi-point video conferencing, work group productivity applications, and a core patient care database.

Systems Design Group, Inc. has provided full time information technology staffing to Hospice of the Bluegrass for ten years. During this timeframe Hospice has migrated from a one function, one server Unix environment to a multi-platform, Windows 2003 based Wide Area Network. SDG and Hospice met the requirements of rapid and efficient communication and data sharing by implementing video conferencing, Microsoft Exchange, a proprietary Intranet, a core clinical application, and VPN based access for remote users traveling away from the Hospice offices.

The Results:
Hospice of the Bluegrass has the ability to quickly share ideas and data among users located inside or outside their physical locations, allowing end users to focus on their core function of providing patient care.

Development of a stable, high speed Wide Area network has allowed Hospice of the Bluegrass to reduce the time spent traveling to and from the corporate office for meetings and for gathering data necessary to provide the most comprehensive patient care services possible. Systems Design Group’s IT staffing and project management services ensures Hospice users of rapid resolution to technology related questions and problems, minimizing their time away from the core functions of the agency.