The Neighborhood Health Care Network is a management services organization whose mission is “to strengthen the community clinics through integrated activities so that together they can improve the health of underserved communities.” Since its incorporation in 1995, the Network has built a high-quality, cost-efficient infrastructure to support the Minneapolis – St. Paul metropolitan areas’ primary and preventive health care safety net. By providing collaborative management services, the Neighborhood Health Care Network maximizes cost-efficiencies for its member clinics, works to improve clinical and business functions, and helps to develop and market a comprehensive health care system that is competitive in the marketplace.

 

Neighborhood Health Care Network had an aging network, old server and a hardware problem that needed to be addressed. Their network was supported by an IT network support organization on a time and materials basis, but they were not satisfied with the service they were receiving. They had recurring disk problems and the server required frequent restarts.

 

Joe Kalaidis, Director Health Information Systems, said, “I do not have a systems administrator on staff and I was spending too much time on IT. I needed a better solution and an IT tech support company I could rely on.”

 

Joe said, “I have known Brian McEnaney (Solbrekk Sr. Account Executive) for many years. Bill Hafdal (Solbrekk VP of Business Development) and Brian took the time to understand our environment, take a consultative approach and make recommendations that were in our best interest. Also Solbrekk had recently helped solve another technology problem for me by recommending having our shared practice management system hosted at Netgain Technologies, which has proven to be a very wise decision and a very solid solution.”

 

Joe went on to say, “I also considered remote hosting for our corporate office environment, but decided to keep the server on-site and enter into a managed services agreement with Solbrekk. I had considered other providers, but I was most comfortable with Solbrekk. Bill and the other Solbrekk employees I worked with were very responsive and gave us a lot of attention.”

 

Solbrekk recommended the installation of a new server, a new firewall and 2 new managed switches. Solbrekk installed Windows Small Business Server on one of the servers to run Exchange and the line of business applications. They re-purposed an older server and installed Windows Server 2003 and terminal services. Solbrekk upgraded the network and installed and configured remote network monitoring tools.

 

The managed services agreement includes monthly remote and on-site support, help desk phone support, remote network monitoring and proactive services.

 

Joe said, “Ken Meyer and Dan White did a wonderful job. The work was done on a Saturday. The expectations had been very well set and the follow-up issues on Monday were very minor. The process went smoothly and we were able to hit the ground running Monday morning. There was literally no down-time in the transition. The smooth transition and reliability of the network has been very positive for my staff.”

 

Joe went on to say, “Steph and Mike in the Solbrekk support department are great to work with. I really appreciated Ken’s documentation and training on a good backup retention model. One morning I had a corrupt file error with my backup because someone had forgotten to close an application the night before, but Solbrekk staff responded quickly and remotely resolved the issue. Ken was also on-site when we had a new phone system, phone lines and ISP installed. Thanks to Ken there was minimal disruption and the cutover went as planned with no down-time.”

 

Joe concluded by saying, “I now spend less time on IT issues. In the past, IT issues took time away from my core responsibilities, such as managing a shared practice management environment for 5 of our clinics and managing a project to implement electronic medical records for 3 of our clinics. Solbrekk has been a true partner in many ways.”