Calculating ROI for Roaming Virtual Desktops in an Epic Environment

Metro Health is an integrated healthcare system with a regional 208-bed hospital, along with 25 clinics in Western Michigan. Metro Health was an early adopter of both EMR and CPOE technology. Using Epic, it links electronic medical records between the hospital, neighborhood outpatient centers and participating physicians, to provide better quality and consistency of care across its network. 

While Metro Health had successfully rolled-out Epic throughout its practices, the technology had not been transparent to Metro Health’s physicians and nurses. For clinicians, simply connecting to the different records they need during the day took time, particularly as they changed locations in both ambulatory and inpatient settings.  

In studying clinician workflows, Metro Health found that physicians logged in on average 20-30 times each day – sometimes moving to dedicated workstations to perform tasks such as examining images or performing dictation.  Some physicians would move between the nearby clinics and the hospital, and needed to log in again at each location.  For nurses, the number of logins could reach 50 per day.

With complete logins taking as much as two minutes each, clinicians were spending as much as 60 minutes per day just logging into the applications. The IT organization knew that they needed to streamline workflows. Metro Health’s motto is “Expert care, made easy” and they wanted to apply the same approach to the technology.  They decided to implement desktop virtualization to streamline and standardize the technology environment, particularly for mobile and roaming clinicians.  

According to Aivars Apsite, Technology Strategist for Metro Health, “While virtualization boosted efficiency and reduced overhead and costs, it added some layers of complexity. We wanted to mask that complexity with single sign-on. Using Imprivata OneSign, we set out to create a secure, dynamic environment for roaming clinicians that minimized clicks and keystrokes.”  

Metro Health looked to Imprivata OneSign authentication management and sign sign-on technology to support its physicians and clinicians with No Click Access™ to a virtual, roaming desktop using VMware View and Teradici zero client technology.

But what about the financial impact of moving to a virtual desktop integration (VDI) environment? What are the costs? What are the savings? And, how do you calculate the ROI for a combined VMware, EpicCare and Imprivata OneSign environment?

Aivars put together a plan to answer these questions and more, and will be presenting his ROI calculation method and findings this Tuesday, July 9 via an AHA Signature Learning Series webinar. If you are considering implementing VDI in your hospital, be sure to sign up for Aivars’ presentation “Calculating ROI for Roaming Virtual Desktops with Single Sign-On”. Aivars will also be available at the end of his presentation to answer live questions from the audience, so don’t miss out.