1. 1 PROFILE  Sweet Spot –Hospitals with 150-400 “in use” beds –Compliment Meditech and CPSI –Avoid hospitals that are members of larger networks  Budgets –Flat –Easiest to justify as operations –Fiscal calendar year

2. 2 CONFIGURATION  Environment –X-ray, MRI machines –Kronos time clocks –Cisco routers and switches –Cabletron hubs –DEC-UNIX workstations –Oracle and MS_SQL for database –NT/W2k workstations –Microsoft Exchange for email –Frame Relay Configuration: Backbone router connecting branches (clinic, physical therapy, labs, etc.) Migrating away form AS-400s

3. 3 PAIN  Maintaining availability of critical systems serving the ER, lab, radiology and other departments  Ensuring reliability of diagnostics machines as they “commit records”  Maximizing response time when accessing “clinical repositories”  No visibility into the source of slow service issues  Processing payroll when time clocks fail

4. 4 HIPAA’S ROLE IN IT  The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)  Key provision: Administrative Simplifications  Equipment vendors addressing critical privacy issues  Overall, only 10% applies to IT  Security compliance became a play in late 2003