August 2009 Volume 3, Issue 8

We Cut Our Downtime From Several Times a Week To No Time at All — And Saved Over $10K Doing It!

CMIT does the work of a full-time technician for a fraction of the price

When the Brown Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine Center (BOSS) started looking for a replacement for their full-time technician, they were dead set on hiring another full-time employee.

After all, their old IT person stayed busy for 40 hours a week dealing with maintenance, upkeep, and frequent server restarts at this “one-stop shop” for sports medicine and rehabilitation. They considered outsourcing their IT services, but decided that they didn’t want to deal with any of the hassles that went along with losing an in-house IT authority. “One of our biggest concerns just came from some bad experiences with outsourcing our IT department,” says CEO Jacob Rodman. “A lack of response, not being here when we truly needed them – that was our hesitation with going with CMIT or any outsourcing company, for that matter.”
But they just couldn’t find the right individual to hire on staff, so they ended up engaging CMIT Solutions of North Raleigh on a temporary basis. They figured they’d use CMIT until they found the right person, and then they’d move on.

But BOSS made an interesting discovery: CMIT was giving them everything they needed at a fraction of the price of a full-time employee. In fact, outsourced IT wasn’t just giving them equivalent work; they were actually improving BOSS’s quality of service, minimizing disruptions, and increasing reliability.
Before CMIT, data disruptions were “such a part of our lives that we got used to it,” Jacob recalls. “Now that we’re not going down, it makes a big difference. Even the staff comments on it. I think sometimes they just realize, ‘Hey, we haven’t been down in a couple months.’”Automation Was the Key
Instead of having one person running around like a headless chicken trying to perform triage on the latest technology crisis, BOSS now had a whole team of experts working to prevent problems from happening in the first place. And by automating critical security and software updates, they ensured that the updates would install regardless of whether a human was in the office to make that happen.
“ They’ve automated a lot of our systems, which in turn, has cut their time way down here,” Jacob explains. “It saved a little bit of money, number one. Number two, it’s given us a lot of peace of mind. We knew they were here; we knew they did a good job, especially when the electricity went out over a weekend. They knew it before we even knew it. They were here to fix it really before anybody got in the office.”
They’re Saving Upwards of $10,000 a Year!
One of the most remarkable improvements around the office has simply been to the bottom line. Jacob estimates that CMIT saves them “around $10,000 a year” in labor costs – and in exchange they get better service, their computers aren’t going down, and their physician staff (including Dr. Howard Brown) has better access to client records.
When you really think about it, $10,000 in savings is probably the tip of the iceberg. “If you account for [wasted] employee time and lost revenue for going down and all those things, CMIT’s preventing that would add a tremendous amount,” Jacob observes.
More Clued In and Connected
As a medical practice, it’s imperative that BOSS keep its main doctor up-to-date on scheduled surgeries and ensure that he has consistent access to medical records and information. Joel Broadway, president of CMIT Solutions of North Raleigh, and his staff implemented two small but very important changes to their IT plan in order to make this happen.
Dr. Brown relies on his mobile phone to serve his patients and keep track of his schedule. He often receives high-quality digital X-rays, for example, on his mobile phone and uses them to diagnose problems.
“ If one of the physician’s assistants in the office ever has a question and he’s in surgery, he can pull those x-rays up on his phone and zoom in to high detail,” says Jacob. “So it’s not only comforting for him, it’s also comforting for the PAs.  They know that at any given time, they can get ahold of him and he’d be able to answer questions.”
But prior to CMIT, the BOSS staff was using special scheduling software to enter and manage Dr. Brown’s appointments. And that software did not synchronize with Dr. Brown’s Outlook calendar or his mobile phone, so he had to maintain multiple calendars and plug in his phone when he wanted to synchronize them.
So CMIT, using its vast experience, recommended “Best Practice” solutions. First, they suggested that Dr. Brown simply give the appropriate staff members permission to read and manage his calendar. CMIT then installed inexpensive software so Dr. Brown’s mobile phone would automatically synchronize with his Outlook calendar – without having to plug it in.
Dr. Brown said that change alone has been “worth a million dollars!” ^top

Banish Digital Clutter In 4 Simple Steps

Even people with tidy desks and pin-neat offices sometimes find themselves with a whole lot of clutter – on their hard drives. But just because storage is cheap these days doesn’t mean you need to have a lot of spare bits and bytes hanging around. Keeping extra files on your hard drive can make it difficult to get to the information you want, leading to lost or duplicated files and a lot of wasted time. Here are a few simple ways you can keep your files in order.

1. Delete, delete, delete.
If you haven’t opened a supposedly “active” file in a year, you’re probably safe throwing it out. At the very least, you can take everything you’re not one hundred percent sure you’re comfortable deleting and stick it all in a folder called “Archive.”

2. Use shortcuts instead of making duplicate files.
If you’re working on several projects that all work off the same document, don’t keep a copy of the document in each project folder. Instead, decide which folder you’ll keep the original in and create shortcuts to that original in every other folder. That way you don’t have to worry about versioning problems.

3. Use descriptive file names.
This sounds simple, but it’s shocking how many people name important documents things like “Report.doc”. Put enough identifying detail in the file name that you’ll be able to discern the contents at a glance.

4. Don’t save what you don’t need.
If a coworker sends you a file for review, chances are you download it, make some notations, re-save, and send it back. Once you’ve sent it, there’s no reason to keep that file hanging around. Create a folder for these sorts of one-off files and then empty it at the end of every week by either deleting the file or, if it’s important, moving it to the appropriate directory. ^top

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