Catalyst Health and GuideIT’s Strategic Services Relationship

GuideIT serves as Catalyst Health’s strategic IT services partner and enables better results through increased customer satisfaction, improved cost-efficiency ratios, and greater infrastructure reliability and availability. Services include clinical and technical service desk, end user support, service management, infrastructure technology operations support, network management, and information technology security support.

The Customer

Catalyst Health is a URAC-accredited clinically integrated network of primary care physicians who have come together to provide high-quality care, helping communities thrive. Catalyst Health began its network of independent primary care physicians in 2015 in North Texas. In the four short years that followed, Catalyst Health has grown to nearly 1,000 primary care providers, with over 300 office locations, and 100 care team members, serving over one million patients. To date, Catalyst Health has saved more than $55 million for the communities it serves. Catalyst Health coordinates care, improves health, and lowers cost – creating sustainable and predictable value.

The Challenge

To support the rapid growth they were experiencing, Catalyst Health needed to transform their current Information Technology environment. The organization was building a new care management platform and expanding upon their existing professional service offerings to independent physician practices. Support of these initiatives would require remediating their current environment as the existing infrastructure support model was too costly.

The organization was seeking a partnership with a Managed Services provider to aid in implementing and supporting a 24×7 scalable model that would improve overall customer satisfaction, provide greater alignment to the business owners, and reduce overall cost as growth occurred. To achieve success of these initiatives, the organization would need to address the following:

• Implement a high availability infrastructure to minimize downtime and service interruptions
• Greater focus on end users and responsiveness with Service Level metrics and continuous improvement to support caregivers across the organization
• Implement ITIL-based best practice standards across the organization that align IT services with the needs of the business
• Improve cost efficiency ratio as growth occurs

“The integration of technology has been a vital part of Catalyst’s growth, driving our innovation and allowing us to accomplish our mission of helping communities thrive. GuideIT’s strategic direction has not only made our internal team more connected but has also allowed the physicians in our network to strengthen their relationships with their patients, all while saving everyone time and money. It’s been a win-win situation for all”
– Dr. Christopher Crow

The Solution

Catalyst Health determined the best approach to achieve the objectives of the business expansion would be to engage GuideIT to tap into their Managed Services solutions that would assume IT leadership and provide subject matter experts. GuideIT would deliver a solution that encompasses infrastructure management, monitoring, end user support, clinical applications service desk, technical service desk, vendor management, call center technology support, and security services. This would provide Catalyst Health with the environment to deploy a new Electronic Medical Record platform which will enable greater access to clinical data for caregivers and offer improved responsiveness while improving the long-term health of their patients. Goals of the IT partnership would include:

• Stabilization of the enterprise infrastructure through Change Management and Best Practice adoption
• Implementation of IT roadmap and modernization that included a new EMR platform
• Greater control of IT cost as a percentage of total revenue that would generate cost savings
• Business stakeholders prioritize IT initiatives for greater focus on success that would drive greater business results

Why GuideIT

With GuideIT’s focus on healthcare expertise combined with its technology capabilities to manage a customers support requirements; a set of best practices and processes would be deployed to provide an improved result for Catalyst Health’s technology environment. GuideIT would operationalize a set of technology metrics to allow for greater transparency of performance, resiliency, and predictable results for the organization.

The best practice approach would create the foundation of operational excellence for Catalyst Health’s IT environment to achieve greater business results as well as on-time delivery and within budget. The underlying cost structure converted from a fixed to variable cost structure to support the scalability and allowed to realize a lower expense cost ratio as quality improved. Having access to critical skill sets that otherwise would be difficult to hire and retain would be of additional value to the organization.

The Implementation

GuideIT began with a consultative approach that included fully understanding the unique business model and support needs of Catalyst Health and its customers. Services were built around nine distinct areas: Infrastructure Management and Optimization, Service Desk, End User Field Support, Clinical Applications Support, Project Management, Vendor Management, Invoice Management, Security Enhancement, and Clinic Support.

1. Service Desk Management – Stakeholders identified the need to implement a more robust service desk that would aid in first call resolution for internal and external customers.
2. Infrastructure Management Transition – As the business grew, the need to support a larger, more diverse and scalable technology portfolio emerged. GuideIT assessed the environment and identified areas for immediate remediation. These included infrastructure standards procedures and performance management solutions were implemented to optimize the current exiting technology. As a part of this transition, GuideIT transitioned existing customer IT staff and filled identified gaps in skill sets with additional resources.
3. Expansion of Infrastructure Support – With continued growth and dependency on technology, Catalyst Health expanded the relationship to include 24×7 Service Desk, Clinical Applications Service Desk, and project management. This expanded scope allowed for greater end-to-end problem resolution.
4. ENHANCEMENTS TO SUPPORT TODAYS ENVIRONMENT – The events of the Pandemic in 2020 brought about new challenges and new solutions. In partnership with Catalyst Health, GuideIT responded with solutions for remote work, remote support, COVID 19 Hotline and most recently a Pharmacy Call Center.

The Results

• Improved operational performance of IT systems with improved system availability
• Seamless integration with the business departments to function as one-team
• Improved IT solutions and responsiveness to the business
• Improved efficiency cost ratios for the organization during a high growth period
• Ability to support increased IT demand with a variable cost structure