Livingston: Protecting Patients with Trusted Healthcare IT Solutions

Overview

LCH provides medical, dental, and behavioral health services to low-income families in Merced and Stanislaus Counties. 

In the spring of 2023, LCH found themselves without an IT Director in the middle of a major migration of their primary application. And while the organization was able to make their way through it, the CEO decided it was time to take a step back and re-evaluate their IT department, security posture, and processes before hiring a new IT leader. To accomplish this, they decided to bring in a third-party IT company that could evaluate their IT needs and provide a written assessment of action items.   

The Problem

LCH had churned through several IT Directors over many years, as well as key technical personnel. The tight labor market of recent years made it difficult to keep talent. This created an environment where IT knowledge of existing systems was in constant flux, and staying ahead of the technology curve became increasingly difficult. This increased organizational risk, especially as it pertained to cybersecurity. 

The Solution

The CEO selected Telcion for a 90-day engagement to assess the organization's IT department. This included reviewing all existing infrastructure, completing a full security analysis, and reviewing the IT resources available.  

Following the review, Telcion provided a gap analysis across the IT spectrum and made recommendations to significantly reduce the organization's operational risk—security improvements, infrastructure upgrades, policy changes, and new ways to manage and engage IT resources.   

One of the key recommendations of this assessment was to consider not filling the empty IT Director position and instead outsourcing the entire IT department to a third party. The advantage of doing this is that a third-party managed IT services partner can bring significantly more resources to bear at any given time and even out the issues caused when technical people come and go. Instead of a small staff of two or three IT resources, MSPs can leverage numerous subject matter experts for various tasks and projects, significantly increasing the organization's capabilities while dramatically lowering the operational risk.   

The Result

LCH chose to engage Telcion for a complete IT outsourcing arrangement. We installed a fractional CIO to manage the IT department, hired the existing IT staff, and began working through all the gaps identified in the security assessment to improve the organization's IT health.   

The result is that projects are completed more quickly, more projects are completed in parallel, the number of open tickets dropped by 75%, and 98% of end users have their issues resolved within the SLA timeframe.   

With an efficiently operating IT department, LCH can now increase business velocity and pursue new revenue opportunities previously unavailable.   In 2024, they opened two new locations in Modesto and Merced and relocated their Turlock facility to a better property. They upgraded their primary EHR platform, expanded radiology services, upgraded dental software, and added a text messaging platform for better patient communications.