Case Study: Saint Luke's Health System

Industry: Healthcare

Piloting: QwickAccess

Saint Luke’s Health System, is an integrated network comprised of 16 hospitals and campuses and more than 11,000 employees. The health system provides primary, acute, tertiary, and chronic care across the Kansas City region.

CHALLENGE

In busy hospital settings, clinicians need the ability to move from room to room and department to department with ease. Quick, efficient access to patient records and clinical apps is critical to providing quality care and maximizing productivity. However, Saint Luke’s was facing challenges with smooth roaming.

As clinicians moved from workstation to workstation, they had to manually login and log out each time—a cumbersome process that slowed down hospital staff. Saint Luke’s needed a proximity badge access system that could streamline clinician workflows across the existing environment, as well as work with their existing single sign-on (SSO) solution. Furthermore, the solution needed to do all of this, while strengthening security in order to meet HIPAA requirements and meaningful use criteria needed to qualify for stimulus funding.

SOLUTION

After careful consideration, Saint Luke’s chose to deploy HealthCast QwickAccess in front of their SSO system. By leveraging the passive proximity badges clinicians were already using for identification and building access, QwickAccess simplified and sped up the login and logoff processes.

Clinicians now start every day by simply walking up to a PC and tapping their badge on the attached USB proximity reader. Upon doing this, a user’s Microsoft® Active Directory® username is automatically populated, and the user can enter their Active Directory password, which is configured to be temporarily saved for two hours. Each user’s unique Citrix® session then automatically launches. Because passwords and sign-on to applications are managed by Citrix®, users are able to access applications without having to enter a password.

When users are finished with their work or wish to move to another location, they simply “tap-out” with their proximity badge to securely disconnect their session and applications.

RESULTS

QwickAccess’s proximity badge functionality has transformed Saint Luke’s login processes—enabling clinicians to seamlessly roam from room to room
and device to device without issue. “Before deploying the new system, Saint Lukes had challenges with smooth roaming,” says Michael Kamer, IT Manager at Saint Luke’s. “And now, the entire process is automated.”

“Our physicians and nurses need only tap their badges, and they can start caring for their patient with no additional clicks or manual interaction,” explains Kamer.

“Clinicians are saving time each day,” says Kamer, elaborating, “For example, we have had physicians say they are able to see two to three more patients a day with the additional time it saves them.”

Not only has QwickAccess increased efficiency, but also security, helping the organization meet HIPAA and meaningful use requirements without hampering clinician productivity. Because clinicians can now lock their sessions with the simple tap of a badge, the risk of a session being left unsecured and exposing patient data is greatly reduced.