Issue link: https://insights.oneneck.com/i/1308883
The Challenge Few industries have as many cri cal moving parts as healthcare. Front line workers — nurses, physicians, and the rest of the care staff — depend on a litany of devices, so ware, and communica ons networks to provide the best possible care to their pa ents. Like many healthcare facili es, Iowa-based MercyOne Newton Medical Center needed to balance delivering the essen al back IT infrastructure to support daily opera ons with the economic reali es of the industry. Facing increasing budget constraints and an exodus of tech talent, the hospital needed a cost-effec ve, reliable way to keep its technology updated and provide support staff to manage it without breaking the budget – all during a global pandemic. "Over the years, our IT infrastructure had become outdated with several genera ons of products held together by proverbial duct tape," says Heather Wolf, Senior Administrator and Manager of HR at MercyOne Newton. "We didn't have the budget to do a complete overhaul, and we also lost a significant por on of our IT staff, which le us just trying to get by as best we could." Wolf knew that the team faced an uphill ba le in modernizing its infrastructure and right-sizing its support staff. Hiring new IT talent would be prohibi vely expensive for the hospital's budget and onboarding new employees could take months. At the same me, understanding where, when and how to refresh the technology environment presented a monumental challenge that eventually would require some outside assistance. "We didn't emphasize IT documenta on in the past, so when we suddenly had to replace the ins tu onal knowledge of five or six of our most experienced team members without a roadmap, things became quite dire," Wolf says. "We reached out to some of our MercyOne partners who recommended contac ng OneNeck, and a er comparing them with a handful of other poten al partners, we realized they'd be the best fit for helping us right the ship now and sustain it in the future." The Company MercyOne Newton Medical Center is a fully owned hospital of MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center and a member of MercyOne Network. It is located in the city of Newton, Iowa, county seat of Jasper County and has a well-deserved reputa on for bucking the trend of diminished health care in rural America by enhancing the quan ty and quality of its services during the last two decades. "It was evident from the start that OneNeck wasn't just in it for the paycheck and that they truly had our best interests at heart from the very beginning." Heather Wolf Senior Administrator and HR Manager MercyOne Newton Customer Case Study MercyOne Newton Medical Center Modernizing IT Infrastructure on a Budget