For Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH), 2021 was a 12 months of huge change.The New Jersey healthcare community with 17 hospitals rolled out 1000’s of Chromebooks to employees to assist a speedy shift to distant work for a lot of staff. The deployment was additionally step one in a wider mission that concerned changing Office 365 with Google Workspace for 40,000 staff and the adoption of Google’s Cloud Platform.HMH’s transfer to Google was accelerated by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, pushed by the sudden the necessity to assist employees that had been capable of working exterior healthcare services.“At the beginning of the pandemic…, we did not have a full UC platform rolled out,” mentioned Mark Eimer, senior vp and affiliate CIO and CTO at Hackensack Meridian Health. “Most of our applications work very well within our four walls, but they didn’t work for a true mobile workforce.“The pandemic forced us to pivot very quickly. When our CEO said everyone that’s not doing direct patient care needs to work from home, we purchased 3,000 Chromebooks, got them configured in kiosk mode and basically sent people home.” Hackensack Meridian Health
Mark Eimer, senior vp and affiliate CIO and CTO at Hackensack Meridian Health.
The rollout of Chromebooks was a hit, mentioned Eimer, and led to a rise within the variety of telehealth visits carried out throughout the pandemic. And with distant employee productiveness rising throughout this time (to the extent that HMH employed a chief wellness officer to handle worker burnout) the hospital community plans to proceed its hybrid distant technique long run.The {hardware} rollout has additionally now been prolonged to 5,000 Chrome OS gadgets to extra frontline staffers. What started with non-direct affected person care this 12 months, in addition to 50 ambulatory websites, will likely be expanded to all hospitals starting in January. (Staffers entry HMH’s Epic well being document system through Citrix Workspace on the Chromebook gadgets.)“By the end of 2022, we will be one of the few, if not the only, large integrated delivery health networks that have rolled out Google Workspace and Chrome OS across the board,” he mentioned.Ransomware threatsWhy did HMH select to distribute Chrome OS-based gadgets?“Security is one driving factor, simplicity is another,” mentioned Eimer. “If I think about operational support in the field…, there’s so much complexity on a Windows device. We’re removing all of that, which enables the device to boot up faster, and allows a clinician to log in quicker because of the simplicity of the Chrome OS platform.”In phrases of safety, ransomware is a key consideration for any healthcare group, with the trade itself a rising goal. It’s notably pertinent for HMH, which fell sufferer to a ransomware assault two years in the past.Eimer mentioned that Chrome OS gadgets are a much less doubtless goal for ransomware than Windows gadgets, as a result of prevalence of Microsoft’s working system.“There are 12 ransomware attacks on companies every single day,” he mentioned. “We know that Microsoft Windows is a targeted platform. Whether it be to a Linux-based platform on the desktop or in the data center, our goal is to try to move off as many Microsoft platforms as we can, because it is hugely targeted.”Swapping Office 365 for Google WorkspaceOne other facet of the Google partnership has been a swap from Microsoft’s Office 365 to Google’s Workspace productiveness and collaboration utility suite. This meant shifting all 40,000 HMH staff in a single “big bang” migration. “We’re past implementation and we’re now in optimization,” mentioned Eimer.HMH makes use of many of the apps within the Workspace suite, together with Docs, Meet, Chat and Spaces, because it phases out Microsoft’s productiveness and collaboration software program suite.“We were on Office 365 for years. If you look at Office 365…, Microsoft tried to patch together a lot of applications. They’re not very seamless, they don’t work well together.”Users have discovered that shifting between Workspace apps is extra intuitive, with the person instruments built-in extra successfully. “While some of this is available in Office, it isn’t stitched together as seamlessly as it is in Google,” he mentioned.Workspace app options and performance are only one facet of transfer. As a healthcare group with tight budgets, saving cash was one other key driver for the swap, mentioned Eimer.“Microsoft is continuing to increase the price around Office 365…. The average healthcare provider has a 2% operating margin: I can’t continue to pay exorbitant rates on the Microsoft side and still have both state and federal governments keep reducing reimbursement rates: I’m getting squeezed on both sides,” he mentioned.The migration of 40,000 staffers to WorkspaceManaging the migration of tens of 1000’s of employees from acquainted Office 365 instruments to Google’s suite was no small feat, least of all throughout a pandemic. Support from senior leaders was essential, mentioned Eimer.“I sat very closely with our executive leadership team to ensure, multiple times, that I had executive leader buy in and support. If I didn’t have that, then I wasn’t moving forward,” he mentioned.Nevertheless, managing the mission was a significant enterprise. “We spent a significant amount of time on organizational change management. [This included] partnering with our learning and development team within HR. We built a resource site with self-paced, web-based training, so that everyone could learn on their own time and own schedule,” he mentioned.Other facets of the rollout included internet hosting webinars on the usage of Workspace apps, in addition to classes for government admins who wanted to assist a number of executives, and department-level coaching the place required.“We over-communicated multiple times about the resource site and schedule,” mentioned Eimer. “We also spun up a specific Google service desk, specifically for the ‘go-live,’ and we had a command center to address any issues and concerns at the time.”Because the 2 platforms function in numerous methods, change can take some adjusting to.“We spent a lot of time on explaining ‘in Word, you do this, and in Google Docs, you do it this way,’ because a lot of people tried to take what they learned in Microsoft and do it in Google. It’s really just about acclimation, because Workspace, for the most part, is about 80% [feature] parity-even with Office.”Although many of the migration is finished, there’s nonetheless a solution to go to finish the transition from to Workspace. “We still have 5,000 people using Microsoft Office, and the goal is to fully get rid of Microsoft Office, so we’re still working on that.”HMH is speaking with Google executives about tailoring Workspace apps to swimsuit the workflows particular to healthcare employees. The hospital community will even proceed to develop its use of the Google Cloud Platform, notably round the usage of Big Query databases going ahead.“Our goal at Hackensack Meridian Health is to pull out the bulldozer and build a whole new path for healthcare and life sciences, leveraging the Google platform to be the productivity and end user device platform of choice, and to get it to work seamlessly in healthcare,” mentioned Eimer.

Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.