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CDW Healthcare Provides IT Infrastructure Solutions To Help Leading Physician Groups Improve Patient Safety And Operational Efficiency

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 September 2006, 09:01 CDT

CDW Healthcare, part of the public sector subsidiary of CDW Corporation

(NASDAQ:CDWC), and a leading provider of technology products and

services to healthcare organizations, today announced that Clearwater

Cardiovascular and Interventional Consultants, M.D., P.A., Clearwater,

Fla.; Summit Medical Group, P.A., Berkeley Heights, N.J.; and Texas Gulf

Coast Medical Group, LLC, Houston, Texas, have partnered with CDW

Healthcare to provide technology infrastructure solutions that support

the organizations' digital healthcare

initiatives designed to improve delivery of care.

"The adoption of PACS1

and EMR2 systems and their underlying IT

infrastructures represents a significant investment in time and capital

for a physician practice," said Bob Rossi,

director of CDW Healthcare. "Delivering a

return on that investment requires a solid understanding of both the

technology and its healthcare applications. CDW Healthcare is uniquely

positioned to provide technology expertise and options around the IT

infrastructures that support advanced PACS and EMR implementations."

Clearwater Cardiovascular Implements All-In-One PACS Storage Network

Clearwater Cardiovascular and Interventional Consultants, a specialty

practice focusing on cardiovascular medicine, selected CDW Healthcare to

help it create a comprehensive storage solution for the organization's

PACS system. Today, the organization has the ability to store all images

on a centralized, secure network, enabling rapid access to critical

images and ensuring data redundancy and survivability.

Clearwater had purchased a digital echocardiogram system with limited

storage. The practice required a storage solution that could support

digital echocardiograms as well as other modalities moving forward with

limited manual intervention. Clearwater worked with CDW Healthcare to

select EMC Centera as the foundation for its PACS storage solution.

"Our CDW Healthcare account team brought a

deep knowledge of storage vendors as well as a solid understanding of

our unique requirements," said Connie Kleber,

chief information officer, Clearwater Cardiovascular and Interventional

Consultants. "The CDW Healthcare team was

very good about handling even the smallest issues with EMC, freeing me

to work on the internal processes and change management required for a

successful implementation."

To ensure data redundancy, the practice implemented a mirrored storage

system, with the primary PACS storage system located in the organization's

Clearwater office and the mirrored system in a satellite office. This

configuration streamlines HIPAA compliance by eliminating the need to

transport back-up tapes. Redundancy also offers another layer of safety

in the hurricane-prone region.

Summit Medical Group Implements an Organization-wide PACS Solution

Summit Medical Group, a multi-specialty practice that uses a team

approach for the evaluation and management of medical conditions, worked

with CDW Healthcare to design and implement a unified storage

infrastructure for the practice's PACS

platform. Today, Summit is improving patient care with its PACS

implementation, which allows more rapid access to images and ensures

their sustainability. It is also moving toward becoming a paperless

environment for imaging, allowing Summit's

physicians to work more effectively and efficiently by accessing images

when they need them rather than waiting for a film delivery.

Summit's PACS system, which is built on EMC

storage technology, is live and running for multiple modalities,

including general x-ray, computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans,

magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound and more. In addition to

the storage component, Summit also purchased diagnostic-quality Planar

monitors and work stations for the PACS system from CDW Healthcare.

Summit recently started a second phase of its PACS implementation, which

will allow physicians to review x-ray images in exam rooms or their

offices and interpret the results or share them with a patient.

"CDW Healthcare provided the expertise

we needed for our extensive storage requirements,"

said Craig Edwards, network manager, Summit Medical Group, P.A. "We

have been working with CDW for seven years because it has consistently

brought value to the table. Our CDW Healthcare account team helped us

look at our needs today and moving forward to identify the best solution

for our organization. Their depth of knowledge and responsiveness was

tremendously valuable to us during an implementation that involved

significant financial and operational risk."

"CDW continues to invest in advanced

technical resources to provide in-depth advice on the market's

latest offerings so our customers can focus on their critical strategic

business and patient-centric decisions," said

Rossi.

Texas Gulf Coast Medical Group Joins EMR to Mobile Point of Care

To eliminate the operational and storage burdens of paper charts as well

as increase the quality of patient care, Texas Gulf Coast Medical Group,

a multi-center healthcare organization serving more than 50,000

patients, has partnered with CDW Healthcare to provide the hardware and

technology infrastructure that supports its new EMR and Mobile Point of

Care (MPOC) solutions. When fully implemented later this year, the

system will allow physicians to retrieve medical records and enter

prescriptions at the point of care via tablet PCs, vastly improving the

accuracy of order entry and reducing the time needed for document

retrieval.

"The joint EMR/MPOC implementation represents

one of the largest and most complex projects our practice has undertaken,"

said Chuck Kubricht, IT Supervisor, Texas Gulf Coast Medical Group. "CDW

Healthcare provided excellent guidance on pricing and vendor selection

for hardware and servers, helping us to integrate separate hardware

components into a unified solution that provided us with system

redundancy. Once complete, our physicians will have the tools they need

to consistently provide the highest level of patient care via a secure,

reliable and mobile network."

In addition to optimizing patient care within the facilities themselves,

Texas Gulf Coast's EMR implementation will

utilize an internal web server to provide remote access to health

records via a Secure Socket Layer (SSL). The solution includes 52 Motion

tablet PCs (one for each doctor and nurse) and two HP servers each for

application, database and terminal needs, all run on a Cisco-powered

network equipped with wireless control. The entire network provides for

full redundancy via dual switches and controllers as well as clustered

database servers for failover capability.

About CDW Healthcare

CDW Healthcare, part of the public sector subsidiary of CDW Corporation

(NASDAQ:CDWC), is a leading provider of technology products and services

focused exclusively on healthcare organizations. Working in partnership

with customers ranging from small rural providers to large and complex

integrated delivery networks, CDW Healthcare responds with a sense of

urgency to customer technology needs, delivering best-in-class solutions

from top-name brands such as IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft, Planar, EMC,

Ergotron Symantec, Motion, Lenovo, NEC, Xerox and Symbol. CDW Healthcare

account management teams build strong customer relationships by

responding to customer IT infrastructure requirements with in-depth

advice, technical expertise and the best technology that the industry

has to offer.

For more information about CDW Healthcare offerings, procurement

options, services and solutions, call 1.800.410.4239, or visit the CDW

Healthcare Web site at http://www.cdw.com/healthcare.

1 Picture Archiving and Communications Systems

2 Electronic Medical Record

Source: Business Wire

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