St. Louis Health Center Achieves Big Savings through Comprehensive IT Revamp

Established by the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George and now sponsored by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, OSF Saint Anthony’s Health Center was founded in 1925 by five pioneering Sisters, who traveled from their General Motherhouse in Thuine, Germany to expand their mission to America. In 1956, the organization became a fully licensed hospital, operating as Saint Anthony’s Hospital.

New IT leadership within the organization recognized the opportunity to upgrade the overall IT architecture to best position Saint Anthony’s for the evolving dynamics of healthcare IT. “Saint Anthony’s looked to IT Solutions for expertise, personnel and high-level IT ‘tools’ in order to protect, manage and improve our information technology system,” says Sister M. Anselma, VP of Professional Services. IT Solutions identified the need for better management of 400 workstations, an update to the Windows server farm and the latest data security and protection.

IT Solutions provided its Co-Managed Support Plan. To ensure that no data would be lost in the event of an equipment failure—a crucial issue to address—IT Solutions immediately set up data backups of every server and employed Managed Security Services to run nightly and take encrypted images of every server.

IT Solutions also implemented a ticketing management system to document every problem and its resolution. Service records began across all 1,000 of the health center’s devices. This allowed Saint Anthony’s and ITS to easily address trends and problems, including those that had previously gone unseen or unreported. Continuity of staff was no longer a concern. The Co-Managed Support Plan and Managed Security Services provided comprehensive reporting for everything from asset management to security patch implementation, roll back, and compliance auditing.

IT Solutions offered the depth that only a staff of 30-plus people can bring. If experts were needed in a specific area of service, ITS was able to supply them at no additional cost to the hospital. Estimates for first-year cost savings were over $200,000 while adding capabilities that did not exist prior to partnering. Saint Anthony was able to enjoy these savings while adding a greater level of IT control and reporting, and while having an IT partner that they could contact at any time—even after hours—to address technical issues quickly.