Case Study: Comprehensive Managed IT for Where Smiles Grow
Where Smiles Grow provides exceptional quality dental care to pediatric patients in Delmar and Latham, NY. With state-of-the-art facilities and a dedicated staff of over 30 employees, Where Smiles Grow provides regular exams and screenings as well as a broad range of treatments and procedures to restore and maintain dental health. Striving to be the most comprehensive and skilled pediatric dental practice in the Capital District of New York State, Where Smiles Grow’s mission is to ensure every experience with their team leaves patient-families with a smile.
Customer satisfaction is the key to their success. With a growing business and expansion into a new office location, Where Smiles Grow needed an IT solutions partner to help them improve network reliability and security while providing ongoing 24x7x365 proactive systems monitoring—ultimately reducing customer waiting times, increasing regulatory compliance, improving systems efficiency and reliability, and ensuring a dependable, tier one hardware/software solution.
“I feel more confident knowing cb20 is there to take care of our needs. If I have a concern, I call them and they are always right there to help.”
— Ann Marsh, Where Smiles Grow
The IT Challenge: Growth, Compliance, and Security
Capital District Pediatric Dentistry, with its original office located in Latham, NY, was expanding by adding a second office location in Delmar, NY. With 30 employees increasing to 45 with the new office, Where Smiles Grow needed to upgrade their current network system to a more robust, reliable, secure environment.
With the healthcare industry so heavily regulated, protecting patient healthcare and financial information was a high priority. As a trusted healthcare provider, Where Smiles Grow had to manage data securely and efficiently between locations. In order to be PCI compliant, Where Smiles Grow needed an unfailing payment card data security process — including prevention, detection and appropriate reaction to security incidents. They also needed to guarantee HIPAA-compliance to safeguard appropriate protection of electronic patient health information.
In addition to onsite data protection, HIPAA regulations require entities to establish standard backup policies and procedures, back-up data both on-site and off-site, as well as provide adequate audit trails, reporting and disaster recovery capabilities. With limited IT resources, Where Smiles Grow needed a partner for strategic planning and implementation, systems integration and support to help upgrade and manage their servers, storage, security and networks. As a small business, they were looking for predictable monthly costs to support their IT environment and did not want to hire a full IT staff.
Delivering a Healthier Network
When cb20 first started working with Where Smiles Grow in April 2013, the existing servers were not large or reliable enough to handle adding a new office to the current capacity. Their previous vendor had them in a “whitebox” of homegrown servers — meaning the aging servers were not top of the line or built as well as industry leading servers.
The first step cb20 took was upgrading the server to a Tier 1 HP and adding a virtualized environment which allowed Where Smiles Grow to benefit from added reliability, scalability and recoverability. cb20 installed a Virtualization Solution with built-in redundancy and scalability that will serve Where Smiles Grow now and in the years to come as they continue to grow.
cb20 utilized VMware and Citrix to deliver applications to the new office seamlessly, ensuring all staff had access to the applications to the resources they need in real time—wherever they are. Users can access their virtual desktop and subscribe to corporate applications on-demand from any PC, Mac, thin client, tablet or smartphone, enabling device flexibility, business continuity, and user mobility.
All applications are seamlessly integrated into a single interface, so users only need to log on once to have secure access to all their applications, securing Where Smiles Grow’s network environment while allowing employees to access their personalized profile desktop from either location. The solution allows improved compliance with centralized control, delivers a secure and consistent interface for increased productivity, reduces the support burden and centralizes data management. Thin Client technology was utilized wherever practical, further reducing software and support costs.
Both patients and staff benefit from the cloud-based wireless network from Cisco/Meraki in both locations. This network supplies secure wireless access for office staff with the added benefit of guest Wi-Fi at both locations, increasing employee productivity and reducing customer wait times, while enhancing the waiting room experience.
Ensuring Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Planning
With HIPAA-compliance as a top priority, cb20 moved Where Smiles Grows backups and disaster recovery to a cloud-based system that backs up and stores files offsite immediately in SSAE 16 datacenters. cb20 monitors and manages these cloud services and websites as well as hosted infrastructure to quickly identify and correct any performance issues to ensure Where Smiles Grow is compliant with all HIPAA and PCI regulations, and can manage all patient data securely and efficiently.
cb20 also utilizes remote management tools to fix problems. By ensuring Where Smiles Grow has reliable back-ups, they are HIPAA compliant and covered in case of disaster and can recover files quickly.
“With their expertise, cb20 took us to the next level with our technology.”
— Ann Marsh, Where Smiles Grow
Proactive Support
Through their Proactive Management Services, cb20 offered a customized solution designed to help practices like Where Smiles Grow maintain information technology systems that are flexible to meet the needs of the ever-changing healthcare environment. cb20’s remote Network Monitoring and Audit System manages all of Where Smiles Grow’s networks and sends an alert if there are any security or performance issues that need to be addressed before they become a problem.
Quarterly review reports provide vital information about network activity, servers and hardware to review what is running smoothly and where they may need help. This gives the Where Smiles Grow team peace of mind – knowing their networks and sensitive data are protected 24x7x365. cb20 technical engineers are also onsite at least twice per month to check in, and are there when needed. “All we need to do is pick up the phone and they are available to solve any issue we have,” says Ann Marsh of Where Smiles Grow.
cb20’s senior level engineers are on-site quarterly to make recommendations based on past performance and emerging technologies. With improved information for better IT resource planning, Where Smiles Grow has increased the predictability of their network management costs—saving them money in the long term.
Making More Smiles
By relying on cb20 for the ongoing support and maintenance of their information technology assets, the Where Smiles Grow staff is freed to focus on their mission of providing the best care possible to their patients. Where Smiles Grow clients now benefit from reduced wait times by using tablet technology for patient check-in and are able to access the convenient guest Wi-Fi network while waiting in the lobby.
With fully automated monitoring and alerting of health, availability and performance of their technology systems, they don’t need to worry about compliance issues or security breaches. With an overall reduction in the cost of ownership, a solid view of where their technology stands and what their future needs may be, they can better plan to meet the changing needs of their practice.
About cb20
cb20 is a technology solutions provider of choice for organizations that value IT and Managed Services expertise and category-leading customer service. We partner with the world’s leading hardware and software companies to deliver end-to-end consulting, implementation and managed services across the U.S. With world-class engineering talent and 30+ years of experience cb20 delivers confidence, security, a true sense of control and the highest-quality, end-to-end customer experience in the business.