RiverSpring Health is an internationally recognized non-profit geriatric care organization offering a full continuum of senior care ranging from modern apartments for independent seniors to the most intense level of nursing care, serving more than 10,000 older adults in greater New York. Since its founding in 1917, RiverSpring Health has grown to include a long-term residential elder care facility located on 32-acres along the Hudson River, a senior housing community with both luxury independent living apartments and assisted living, and a community services division offing a full spectrum of in-home geriatric care, supportive services, and managed care plans for people living at home.

Due to increased pressure to provide 24x7 service and support for the IT help desk, and more comprehensive technology support to the growing staff and departments relying on IT for their job, an RFP (Request For Proposal) was developed to outsource the IT help desk, network monitoring, server management and monitoring, and network support for the main campus and remote offices. Lincoln Computer Systems was selected as our outsource partner for this project.

Repositioning – As the organization has grown in size and complexity, it became increasingly difficult to balance the cost, complexity, and staffing necessary to appropriately support the organization’s systems and staff. While many of the newly implemented systems utilize a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, vendor hosted and supported, the internal infrastructure, LAN (Local Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network) design and support, and internally hosted systems and applications require additional attention. Support for 24x7 EMR (Electronic Medical Record) applications and an always connected workforce required a change in approach.

Periodic Revisit of the Strategic Plan / Strategic IT Plan – The updating of the organizations strategic plan, and corresponding update of the IT Plan was required. Upon review of the IT priorities, current situation, and upcoming business and regulatory changes required an increased reliance upon IT services to be successful.

The IT department was run as a business hour only help desk, networking, server, and application support team. There was limited support available in the evenings, none overnight, and one tech covering weekends. The team supported one main campus and several offsite programs. There was no formal on call process and few monitoring tools to proactively manage and maintain the systems. Lean staffing, sick call out, vacations, and special projects taxed the limited resources and many preventive maintenance tasks were delayed. There was little opportunity for employee training on new technology and systems, or incorporating industry best practices.

In support of the strategic IT plan, and industry best practices, an overall assessment was performed of the existing systems, platforms, staff, workload, functions, and responsibilities of the IT team. It was determined the best and most cost-effective approach was to outsource the helpdesk function, as well as the server, storage, network, LAN, WAN, and monitoring responsibilities to a Managed Services vendor with experience in providing this type of service to other healthcare organization of similar size and scope. The remaining IT team, comprised of application support staff, project managers, and web developer, who are all responsible for end user applications, reporting and support, was kept in-house. These support staff positions need to be embedded in the business, and have a high level of cross training.

 

Answer the following questions, weight 25 points each

1. Do you consider outsourcing the help-desk an IT project? What are the major project management knowledge areas that should be addressed to ensure the success of this implementation?
2. If you were the project manager, how could you apply the project’s variables to ensure the success of the project?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Yesoutsourcing the helpdesk can be considered an IT projectIt involves planningexecutingand monitoring the transition of helpdesk support services from an internal team to an external vendorThis trans... View the full answer