AltaMed Health Services - August 2020

AltaMed’s digital healthcare transformation IN ASSOCIATION WITH

ALTAMED HEALTH SERVICES

DIGITAL REPORT 2020

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AltaMed’s digital healthcare transformation

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A LTA M E D H E A LT H S E R V I C E S

Raymond Lowe, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at AltaMed Health Services, discusses clinical system transformation and remote working

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on-profit healthcare company AltaMed Health Services was founded as the East Los Angeles Barrio Free Clinic in

1969, with a mission to provide healthcare to the underserved Latino and multi-ethnic population of east Los Angeles. There was a lack of healthcare available in this area and today they’re one of the largest community health centres in the country, serving nearly 300,000 patients with more than 1,000,000 visits a year.

AltaMed serves everyone and anyone independent of their ability to pay or their immigration status. “We welcome everyone at AltaMed and we are here to help them with primary care and their health concerns, providing quality care without exception” Lowe says. “At our core is social justice.”

Lowe joined AltaMed in January 2018. The company had been going through a decade of “explosive growth”, with the number of patients they serve having increased tenfold.

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A LTA M E D H E A LT H S E R V I C E S

“ Through our digital transformation our patients will have access to healthcare through mobile devices, when and how they want it” — Raymond Lowe, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, AltaMed Health Services 06

He launched its digital transformational journey with a focus on healthcare’s quadruple aim: improving quality, improving patient experience, improving provider satisfaction, and lowering costs. In order to do this Lowe set about developing a comprehensive plan that was rapid, agile and included input from business stakeholders in clinical and financial operation areas. “A DevOps initiative or technology without operational buy-in will likely not deliver the right outcomes,” Lowe says. “I always keep in mind what the corresponding workflow is and what the KPIs are that we need to meet for the organization, thinking not just in terms of technology, but from an operational perspective.

“Digital transformation is not easy,” he adds. “Aligning the organization requires flawless delivery of operations.

Good IT requires detailed planning and strong operations to ensure the organization will be successful. Ultimately, I think IT needs to run like magic.”

The last two years have certainly produced many benefits. AltaMed has hardened core services, particularly uptime and critical services,

AltaMed Health Services CLICK TO WATCH

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07 implementing cyber solutions to

make our data centre to UTI tier III,

address threats that arise with

and we’ve added 350 new virtual

increased remote working and tel-

machines and 33 hosts in the last

ehealth solutions. The company has

two years within the VMware envi-

further been able to extend meeting

ronment,” Lowe explains.

services so remote workers can col-

To upgrade its network and cyber-

laborate seamlessly regardless of

security AltaMed has relied heavily

location and the number of attend-

upon its partners. Lowe explains that

ees. As well as managing televisits

there was technical debt when he

and increased traffic to their patient

first joined, and he needed to bring

portal, they’ve deployed the Epic

the corporation to an enterprise class.

electronic medical record system, a

“Fortunately I have a good partner

new managed care software solution.

network with Cisco and Presidio,

Virtualization has also been a key element. “We’ve been able to

having worked with them previously at Dignity Health, and Red8 is an w w w.a l t a m ed . org

A LTA M E D H E A LT H S E R V I C E S

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existing partner at AltaMed. We

cybersecurity. My entire digital, video

did a baseline gap analysis to plan

and telehealth strategy is built upon

how to correct the environment so

this framework and we are able to

we could be at an enterprise level.

work fast - taking the time to lay the

This involved collaborative working

proper foundation allows you to move

both with my technology team and

fast and perform transformation at

my partners, and through that we

the speed of light. We also entered

developed a remote multi-phase

into enterprise licensing agreements

programme. Ironically, most of it was

in the Collaboration (Webex) and

actually completed prior to COVID-19.

Cisco’s Security Umbrella.”

“The partnership with Cisco and

A partnership with NetApp and

Presidio allowed AltaMed to trans-

Red8 allowed AltaMed to simplify data

form the network, switch route,

management and non-disruptively

hyper converged infrastructure and

scale capacity, while cost-effectively

supporting its general-purpose business applications. Red8 also worked with Lowe’s team consolidating fragmented infrastructure, allowing it to stabilize and grow the core of its managed care business. They also assisted in overall design and deployment of data protection, retention, and encryption.

“Partners really help to shorten the time to market. No organization has all the talent that’s necessary, and great organizations are built on great opportunity. I’ve been very fortunate to have a very strong partner network that has been an extension of my team.” Lowe says.

E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E :

Raymond Lowe Title: Senior Vice President / Chief Information Officer Company: AltaMed Health Services Industry: Healthcare Location: Los Angeles, USA Ray Lowe serves as the Senior Vice President / Chief Information Officer of AltaMed Health Services. Ray started at AltaMed Health Services in January of 2018. Ray currently resides in the Greater Los Angeles Area.

The COVID-19 outbreak has substantially changed the way the company works. In keeping with social distancing guidelines, AltaMed has expanded video and telephonic appointment it opened nine outdoor testing sites including in some places where there was no power or network services. “We had to figure out how to deploy corporate wireless out into a parking lot to support a clinic,” Lowe explains. “From an application and DevOps perspective, in days w w w.a l t a m ed . org

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CLOUD FIRST PARTNER

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Start your digital transformation today by partnering with Red8 and NetApp.

NETAPP AND RED8: POWERING ALTAMED’S TRANSFORMATION NetApp’s Dave Nesvisky and Red8’s Eric Sarraf, Luke Lederman and Brandon Kaier discuss their partnership with AltaMed and the services they provide.

Red 8 and NetApp have played a crucial part in non-profit healthcare company AltaMed Health Services transformation.

Red8 is a system integrator and consulting firm, specialising in areas such as data centres, cybersecurity, DevOps and operations. For more than 20 years, it has helped customers streamline operations and roll out new technologies.

NetApp is a specialist in data management and storage, dedicated to helping customers solve their data challengers whether on-premise, in the cloud or hybrid. It serves organisations of every size in the context of healthcare, from community access hospitals to national health systems.

Working together with AltaMed and its CIO Raymond Lowe, the two companies have helped to simplify data management and scale capacity in a nondisruptive manner, while cost-effectively supporting AltaMed’s general-purpose business applications.

“Our relationship with AltaMed started around eight years ago,” says Eric Sarraf, Senior Account Executive at Red8. “We deployed their very first data storage systems, and since then we have rolled out a number of NetApp systems. Once Ray joined the organisation, we were really able to expand our services.”

Accordingly, Red8 has worked to consolidate fragmented infrastructure, allowing AltaMed to stabilise and grow the core of their managed care business. They also assisted in overall design and deployment of data protection, retention, and encryption systems.

NetApp, meanwhile, provides the crucial data management and storage infrastructure, as Dave Nesvisky, Executive Director - Healthcare, explains: “As the relationship has matured and as the use cases have expanded, AltaMed has enjoyed the benefit and the simplicity of being able to manage all of their data using a common interface - instead of having islands of information and a large portfolio of disparate

NetApp & Red8

products. It takes risk out of the equation, and ultimately also saves considerable training costs in different technologies and platforms.”

The work they’ve done together has had the effect of streamlining operations, and freed up employees to spend less time managing the day-to-day.

“Before, several people were dedicated to just infrastructure,” says Red8’sSenior Systems Engineer, Luke Lederman. Today, they’re in a position where not only can they spend less time managing it, but also where they can scale much more easily as the business grows.”

According to Red8 Field CTO Brandon Kaier, It’s a relationship born of a keen understanding of the ways technology is transforming the industry. “Digital transformation for organisations is, at the end of the day, pretty simple. It’s gaining unrealised value out of a physical asset through the use of technology. Why the partnership with NetApp and AltaMed is so important is the rise of cloud and cloud applications. Everybody, not just born-digital companies, is trying to figure out how they can accelerate their application development.”

The partnership, then, has brought reliable, scalable benefits to the mission critical healthcare environment in which AltaMed operates, doing more with data and freeing up its employees’ time.

Red8.com/Healthcare

A LTA M E D H E A LT H S E R V I C E S

“ Taking the time to lay the proper foundation allows you to move fast and perform transformation at the speed of light”

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— Raymond Lowe, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, AltaMed Health Services

we deployed a brand new build for COVID-19 to support the testing sites”.

We needed increased infrastructure uplift for virtual meetings to provide rich video experience for our patients, providers and employees.

For social distancing and remote work we deployed 800 laptops over a three-week period. Working with Cisco and Presidio helped us accelerate the implementation of a thousand remote workers, which happened in a matter of days.”

Lowe says this was a real test as to nimbleness and agility. “Our teams excelled during this crisis, meeting the needs of our employees and continuing to care for the underserved population of Southern California.”

Looking ahead, he says some of these changes will remain in place.

“Social distancing is now the norm, and certain jobs may not return to the office. From a technical perspective we need to ensure that we have a highly reliable network, connected in a secure manner, allowing employees to be productive either on site or remotely.”

“From a patient perspective, many w w w.a l t a m ed . org

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A LTA M E D H E A LT H S E R V I C E S

people are very concerned about being in crowds, so we are looking at shifting the way we provide care with a much heavier emphasis on video and telephone services.” We are deploying patient-centric care with flexible walls, meaning our patients won’t have to come to a clinic to see a provider. They will be able to obtain care from their location on their schedule. Also for COVID-19 testing we are deploying temperature kiosks that prompt patients and employees 14

to answer CDC guideline questions to ensure the safety for everyone.”

AltaMed’s digital journey has already

“ A DevOps initiative or technology without operational buy-in will likely not deliver the right outcomes” — Raymond Lowe, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, AltaMed Health Services

seen it expand into these areas and they are prepared to continue this digital transformation. For patients enroute to an appointment, AltaMed has enabled them to check in to their appointment on their phone, and wait in their car until someone is ready to see them. They will then receive a text message reminder to let them know when to enter the medical building. To improve the quality of care in the home for chronic disease

1969

Year founded

3,170 Number of employees

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management, AltaMed is also work-

organization that lives its mission

ing on remote patient monitoring

and values providing healthcare

for people with chronic diseases, for

to the most vulnerable and under-

instance by sending out glucometers

served communities. “Through our

to track weight and blood pressure

digital transformation, our patient

in patients with diabetes, conges-

will have access to their providers

tive heart failure, hypertension and

from their mobile device or home

COPD. For moms, it is deploying an

when and how they want it.�

application that will provide education, tracking and support during their pregnancy journey.

AltaMed Health Services is an w w w.a l t a m ed . org

ALTAMED HEALTH SERVICES 2040 CAMFIELD AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90040 T +888 499 9303

www.altamed.org

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