Roaming quickly and securely at Cumberland Healthcare

I recently sat down with Jason Morse, Director of Information Technology at Cumberland Healthcare (Cumberland Memorial Hospital), a 25-bed facility in Cumberland, Wisconsin, to discuss virtualization.

Cumberland’s objective was to virtualize their environment and increase the amount of time their clinicians were able to interact with the patients. To achieve their goals, they needed to minimize the time spent logging into the computer and increase workflow efficiency. Cumberland introduced virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) by pairing VMWare Horizon View and Teradici Zero Clients. To further maximize their virtualized environment, Cumberland paired VMWare Horizon View with Imprivata Virtual Desktop Access® to give their care providers quick and secure access to applications at any point of care. 

Cumberland currently has 200 active users on the system and will be adding another 100 in the next fiscal year, which will take care of all of their staffing departments. Virtualization allows Cumberland clinicians to seamlessly roam between different desktops with their sessions securely following them. From an administrative perspective, the IT team was able to reduce the number of password resets by about 50% and increase productivity with Imprivata in place.

In the interview, Jason discusses why Cumberland chose to implement roaming desktop access, the successful results they saw among the users, and how others in the industry can implement VDI into their hospitals in the future.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the interview:

Jason on deploying virtualization…

‘It was a really smooth transition. We swapped out all machines over the course of a night, and the next day they came in and they saw patients just like they normally would. It’s faster than anything they’ve had in the past.”

Jason on obstacles to implementation…

“Initially the biggest obstacle we had was some of our providers did not want to give up their laptops until they started. They were accustomed to the old school when you had to log-in to each machine independently.”

Jason on the results…

“From an IT point of view, we’ve had close to a 50% reduction in password resets. Just on the provider side from the time savings for the login times, everything we spent on the VDI and Imprivata, the return on investment was about eight days.”

Jason on best practices for implementation…

“Do it in stages. This way you can actually assist the users as you do it. Get the single sign-on working with the VDI to get into the computer and one or two applications. Then start rolling applications out as things happen. Show the providers that this does make their life better with Imprivata and VDI.”

Jason on the reaction from clinicians…

“It’s so well received, additional departments who don’t have it yet, just keep asking when they are getting it. I actually had a nurse say the other day, “You know what, when you guys put this in I almost cried because it was so much nicer than laptops.”

To learn more about Cumberland Healthcare’s success, read their full story here.