Case Study CareGroup

History:
CareGroup, Inc. (“CareGroup”) is a Massachusetts non-profit corporation that oversees a regional health care delivery system comprised of teaching and community hospitals, physician groups and other caregivers. CareGroup’s purposes include the support of personalized, patient-centered care and excellence in medical education and research. CareGroup’s affiliated hospitals and physicians serve the health needs of patients and communities of greater Boston and other surrounding communities in eastern Massachusetts.

Problem Statement:
CareGroup had cut capital budget expenditures, it causes the collapse in network: The proprietary network at CareGroup was poor in design
CareGroup lacked a standardized operational flow
Little control and IT governance on common users to access or make changes to the network configuration Ineffective and not organised disaster recovery procedures and backup process Too heavily depended on a single employee

By 2002, the issue of decentralization of the systems of the hospitals had been address through the creations of a common system for all hospital. On November 13, a researcher left new untested software running in the network causing it to collapse. Ineffective management of customer centric requests

Solution
1. Do not hesitate to bring in the experts to make sure your network is configured properly. CareGroup signed a $300,000 per year agreement for onsite support 2 engineers remained onsite permanently

2. Do not let any one individual in your IT group become the sole point of failure. Have few or several IT experts to deal with the issue, a single opinion may not always be the best or right option. 3. Keep your working knowledge current.

Everyone would interfere with the local IT network in one way or another, therefore the IT group has to remain vigilant and ensure changes, whether how minor is it, is tracked. 4. Beware of users armed with just enough knowledge to be dangerous. Everyone would experiment with the local network in one way or another, always not the changes and be vigilant over it 5. Institute rigorous network change control.

Ensure that the systems are kept up to date
6. Adapt to externalities.
The network had evolved out-of-spec due to mergers, reorganisations and other external activities and events. This led to the IT staff carefully examine changes in the events that could impact the existing IT functionality. 7. There are limits to customer centric responsiveness.

CareGroup no longer is willing to do fulfil all the demands of the customers. 8. Have backup procedures in which you can have confidence.
CareGroup was able to run the hospital on paper systems because of Y2K preparedness. it is crucial to ensure that the system will continue to function in an event of another network shortage. 9. Component redundancy is not enough; you need alternative access methods. Instead of depending on a backup system, a whole completely different method for communication could be used. 10. Life-Cycle-manage your network components.

Replace networking equipment regularly (every 4 years) to ensure that no component is obselete and is able to cause disruptions in the network due to aged firmware. Conclusion
Company should fix the problems immediately when they found it. Company have to hire enough employee who are suitable the position and training they very well. Technology changes fast, if the company doesn’t refresh their information, then it will cause some problems. Adapt to the environment.

Recommend
Keep updating information.
Complete employees training.
Human costs and operating costs cannot be saved
Control the budget appropriately.
Establish the completely of IT systems.