Non-Profit Health System Consolidates Help Desk Services

2 min read

Feb 10, 2022 6:33:06 AM

Challenge

Individual IT Departments’ Support Functions were Redundant and Inefficient

LCMC Health is a New Orleans-based, non-profit health system employing over 9,000 people across five hospitals and emergency rooms and several urgent care clinics. As the LCMC healthcare system grew, each hospital that joined the system relied on its own internal IT department to provide help desk support. Over time, this model became costly and inefficient as highly skilled, internal resources were continuously burdened with “Tier 1” requests, such as password resets and printer issues.

Additionally, LCMC was facing an aggressive implementation schedule for a new EMR system. All five hospitals needed to be converted to the new system within an approximate one-year timeframe. The implementation required round-the-clock support for physicians, nurses, and administrative staff.

Solution

Supplement Internal IT Resources with Outsourced “Tier 1” Help Desk Support

First, LCMC outsourced its Tier 1 managed services to Sparkhound, immediately freeing up internal, high-level resources to focus on more time intensive, in-depth technical requests to support the growing health system. Funneling all Tier 1 requests to the Sparkhound team improved response, alleviate internal staffing challenges related to providing 24/7 support, and allowed the LCMC to better predict associated monthly costs.

Then, Sparkhound established separate teams to support the EMR implementation. LCMC transitioned the hospitals in three phases, with each phase lasting about 4-8 weeks. During this time, Sparkhound closely coordinated between LCMC employees and the EMR system vendor to triage and escalate requests to the appropriate support teams, quickly connecting employees to the proper technical teams and ensuring that patient-care scenarios were treated with the highest priority. The team fielded over 12,000 calls during the active implementation period.

Transformation

Critical Internal Resources Free to Focus on Higher Priority Initiatives

Sparkhound assisted LCMC in successfully bringing five disparate hospitals under a single help desk solution. By outsourcing Tier 1 managed services to Sparkhound, LCMC Health reduced operating costs by more than 25 percent. Additionally, the EMR system implementation was executed on time and with ample support for new users, helping to ensure that patient care was not interrupted.