Cisco Cisco 4402 Wireless LAN Controller Leaflet
Customer Case Study
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Health System Increases Clinical Mobility to Improve
Patient Care
Patient Care
MemorialCare Health System uses the Cisco Unified Wireless Network Solution to
connect mobile clinicians to essential clinical systems.
Business Challenge
MemorialCare Health System, a nationally
recognized nonprofit healthcare provider, operates
five major medical centers in Los Angeles and
Orange County, California. MemorialCare leaders
have long recognized the important role that
technology can play in a healthcare environment,
and the health system has consistently been named
among the “most wired hospitals in the United
States” by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.
As part of MemorialCare’s ongoing efforts to
improve efficiency and quality in the health system,
the organization was planning to deploy Epic, a
state-of-the-art clinical information system.
“We wanted to provide our clinicians with digital
tools to diagnose, prescribe, and document patient
information throughout the clinical lifecycle,” says
Kevin Torres, vice president of information systems, MemorialCare. “We believed that these
capabilities would reduce medication errors, streamline processes, and connect the entire
continuum of care, allowing us to provide the highest quality and service to our patients.”
Although the planned Epic deployment held the potential to empower caregivers in many new
ways, the new clinical tools would also place greater demands than ever before on hospital
information systems. In particular, clinicians would need unprecedented mobility to be able to
access patient records and clinical applications from anywhere in the hospitals, including at the
bedside. That would require an extremely robust, highly secure, and pervasive wireless network.
MemorialCare leaders were planning to deploy an IP communications system at one of the
hospitals, and Torres also wanted to extend the voice capabilities to the wireless network. Health
system leaders envisioned a day when physicians could use wireless IP phones throughout any
MemorialCare facility and nurses could be instantly connected to patients and other caregivers
over a wireless nurse call system. Past wireless implementations in the health system, however,
had been plagued by problems. MemorialCare’s previous wireless networks had been designed to
support a small set of clinical applications, and as the health system’s needs had evolved, the
network could not provide the coverage and reliability clinicians required.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
MEMORIALCARE HEALTH SYSTEM
●
Healthcare
●
California, United States
●
10,000 employees
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
●
Extend clinical applications and information to
mobile clinicians
●
Support new clinical information system with
the utmost quality and reliability
●
Improve efficiency and productivity of
administrative staff
NETWORK SOLUTION
●
Deployed secure, flexible wireless network to
support clinical and administrative applications
BUSINESS RESULTS
●
Improved overall quality of care
●
Increased productivity of administrative staff
●
Built a highly flexible foundation for continually
supporting new applications and services