How Home Healthcare Providers Find Success with App Modernization

In the past, remote monitoring and management (RMM) and Tier 2 troubleshooting were laborious for IT staff and time-consuming for users. When problems couldn’t be resolved remotely, users had to send in their devices for repair, which slowed productivity and increased costs. Although Amedisys had a remote management tool, it mostly served for location tracking.

In late 2022, Amedisys was in the market for a new RMM solution when it learned from CDW that Intel vPro® — already built into the laptops it had purchased — offered all the capabilities the company needed at no additional cost. It simply had to be activated.

Ed Lewis, manager of enterprise systems at Amedisys, was impressed that instead of trying to sell his organization a new solution, CDW helped it achieve significant savings. Amedisys could cancel its $130,000 annual subscription to the old solution and wouldn’t have to buy anything new.

“That resonated with me,” Lewis says. “That’s what a partnership’s about.”

Intel vPro® Provides Simpler, Faster Support

Many admins don’t realize the full extent of Intel vPro®’s capabilities. To address that, Intel partnered with CDW and other experts to help deliver and scale an activation service. Certain Intel vPro® features are available from day one, but remote management must be activated so administrators can configure it for their environments; for instance, defining access permissions for various user groups to maintain HIPAA compliance.

At Amedisys, Systems Administrator Marc Gleason and a CDW engineer worked together on the activation process. They installed and configured the server with which the remote laptops would communicate and installed Intel’s cloud-based Endpoint Management Assistant. EMA enables a secure connection to a device via Intel’s Active Management Technology.

Gleason says the activation was straightforward, and the Intel vPro® interface is intuitive.

“You don’t have to baby it,” he adds. “It just works.”

For such a simple operation, the results have been profound. Downtime has been dramatically reduced because Tier 2 staffers can easily jump in to troubleshoot, update Windows, reimage machines and perform other tasks. Notably, they can do all of that below the OS, even if a machine has crashed, as long as it’s plugged in and online.

As evidence of the change, Phillips says that his six-person Tier 2 team now clears its queue every day. Timeliness matters, given that regional care center employees are responsible for caregiver scheduling.

“If your machine is maxed out on memory usage and is rebooting every time you try to do scheduling, it’s a problem that impacts patient care,” Phillips says.

Although Phillips’s team focuses on end-user support, Lewis’s team leverages Intel vPro® for proactive, enterprisewide activities, particularly related to security. “If a device is not encrypted, which is mandatory in healthcare, we can use Intel vPro® to resolve it without interrupting the user,” he says.

Lewis also praised the platform’s security: “Intel vPro® has its own security baked around it because it’s on the chipset, and everything is built on the device itself.”

Today, Amedisys continues to find new ways to leverage Intel vPro®, such as integrating it with ServiceNow and Microsoft Teams to automate troubleshooting further.

“We’re an innovative group,” Phillips says. “We’re always pushing the envelope and trying new things.”

READ MORE: What is CDW’s SAMA, and how can it help healthcare organizations?

Streamlining Healthcare HR Services through Modernization

Technology has always been crucial to home-based care, says Bill Dombi, president of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. “There’s pretty much no facet of the delivery of care in the home that is not partnering with technology,” he adds.

Being able to develop insights that enhance operations is one of the most significant benefits of IT modernization, Dombi says. “Integrated technologies drive the ability to gather data and perform analytics. These in turn help develop efficiencies and clinical best practices and address workforce issues to improve retention,” he says.

For New York-based VNS Health, better data was just one of the payoffs of implementing an HR self-service platform. In the past, despite having designated HR employee roles and responsibilities, employees with HR questions would call up the department team member they knew best to get answers. The process wasn’t always efficient, especially if the staffer wasn’t an expert in that area and had to do further research.

Along with the self-service component, employees seeking help with more complex matters can submit a case to HR (or call the HR hotline, and HR will create a case on the employee’s behalf). Cases appear on the HR team’s queue, where anyone on the team can assign themselves and respond in a timely manner. HR staff can also view employees’ case histories, which can provide more insight into their questions or issues.

Having requests come to the entire team instead of just one person results in a more timely response for the employee and builds HR staff knowledge because they’re handling all types of calls, says Michelle Antonucci, director of HR shared services operations at VNS Health.

“Our team answers questions about benefits, payroll, training, PTO and other areas,” she says. “It helps them learn more and advance in their own careers.”

The platform also makes it easy for employees to submit documents to HR, view their case histories to review responses to past questions or even reopen a case if they still have queries. “The system itself is very intuitive,” Antonucci adds.

As a director, Antonucci says she benefits from having greater visibility into the case management queue. With green, yellow and red color coding, she can instantly see if calls are lingering and act accordingly. “I can have eyes on it without spending all day following up with the team,” she says.

Modernizing the workflow also allows for more data that Antonucci can use to manage her team and enhance HR services. For example, noting that 18 percent of case management queries were coming from new employees, she identified areas of VNS Health’s onboarding materials that could be improved to ensure employees have all the information they need. If numerous calls come in about a specific policy, she can work with her HR colleagues to modify the policy to make it clearer.

“It’s a great way to identify trends,” Antonucci says.

DISCOVER: The ultimate roadmap to modernizing legacy applications in healthcare is here.

Application Modernization Optimizes Healthcare IT

For many providers, modernizing back-office technology ultimately leads to a better patient experience: Simple, efficient workflows enable clinicians to focus on care. But application upgrades also create a better experience for IT teams, which can help providers retain valued employees.

By reducing technical debt and increasing opportunities for automation, application modernization enables IT departments to be more efficient and effective.

At Amedisys, for example, remote management via Intel vPro® eliminated much of the logistical coordination that had to happen before IT support teams could even start to troubleshoot user devices. Now, IT staffers can repurpose some of that time for strategic priorities that help the business, such as putting systems in place to ensure that new employees have all the necessary applications and access they need to be productive from day one.

For Lewis, that continuous drive to be better is integral to Amedisys’s approach.

“I want to make sure we’re above the industry standard. We’re always improving our fighting position,” he says.

UP NEXT: What health systems need to consider about at-home acute care security.