Peace Country Health
A New World of Work at Peace Country Health Region with Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server 2007
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Company Overview
For years hospitals in Alberta operated independently – each managed by their own board of directors. However, that changed in 1996 when Alberta moved to a regionalized healthcare model. Today 16 communities in Northern Alberta make up the vast health region called Peace Country Health (PCH) which spans over 150,000 square kilometers and employs more than 4,000 people.
Business Challenge
To facilitate communication among these workers, the region connects its 23 remote sites through a wide area network (WAN) to the central site in Grande Prairie, the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital. Working across these distances, staff relied on Microsoft® Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client to exchange documents with colleagues. While effective for communication, email was not the most suitable for document management. Without a central repository for data, inboxes and file shares grew clogged with multiple versions of the same document, which left people wondering which file versions to use. The result was increasing workflow inefficiencies, which took their toll on productivity.
“People showed up to meetings with different versions of the same document. Nobody knew which document version was right and people wasted time sorting it out,” says Sean O'Neill, Regional Manager, Information Management and Technical Services. “We needed a tool that ensured everyone was on the same page, so that we could make the most of our time together.”
The sheer size of the region also raised concerns about the safety of mobile workers. Home care nurses frequently traveled alone to visit patients in remote areas. Medical staff, executives and administrators also traveled great distances to attend meetings at other hospitals. New government legislation requiring health regions to track home care nurses added pressure mandating PCH to find a solution.
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Solution
In July 2006, Peace Country Health turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Compugen Inc. for help.
“Compugen has been working with us for some time as our Microsoft enterprise software licensing partner and keeping us abreast of new Microsoft products, so we’re quite comfortable working with them,” says O’Neill. “Although healthcare organizations are normally leery about trying anything new, Compugen did a good job of explaining how we could take advantage of the new 2007 Microsoft Office system and Exchange 2007 and we were confident in their ability to help us deploy them effectively.”
First, Compugen rolled out Office SharePoint® Server 2007, which it used to create a secure intranet site that allows PCH employees to centrally manage, store and access the volume of documents from anywhere in the region. Document templates include meta data tags that identify authors, contributors and editors, and each document is “labeled” with the time and date they were changed so that workgroups can track the latest versions.
“Establishing ownership goes hand-in-hand with making sure people can find the right documents, at any time,” says René Tailleur, Practice Manager for Microsoft Technologies, Compugen. “With SharePoint Server 2007, employees are alerted when they need to review a document. This ensures the version they are viewing is always current.”
PCH also took this opportunity to upgrade its email system to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. With Exchange Server 2007, PCH is bringing together disparate communications technologies such as phone, fax and email into a single environment. Users are able to access all their communications on every device, and in every Microsoft Office application.
“With Exchange Server 2007, employees are able to communicate the way they want. They can check their voice mail from their desktop, their laptop or Smartphone, or even launch a video chat from Microsoft Word,” says O’Neill.
In addition, the health care region is developing a staff tracking system based on Exchange Server 2007, SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Speech Server 2007. With this application, mobile employees can call into Microsoft Speech Server 2007 and inform the system of their current location and their destination. The system then stores the information in a SharePoint Server 2007 workflow and tracks the employee’s travel progress against a specific timeframe. Once the employee reports their safe arrival, the system stops the tracking process. If the employee does not call within the specified timeframe, the system tries calling the employee directly. If the employee fails to answer, the system contacts the control centre or a supervisor to alert them of the situation.
“The security of our workers is paramount, and this tracking system will help give us peace of mind that employees arrive safely at their site,” says O’Neill.
Business Benefits
With SharePoint Server 2007, PCH facilitated greater collaboration among its employees by creating an intranet site where staff can centrally store and easily access documents no matter where they are located. Not only has this simplified the way people work together and better manage content, it has created a new world of work at PCH.
Better document management
Instead of relying on email alone, employees can now publish and update new document versions as they are made available. Every document is now clearly labeled with vital details such as the author, editors, the date changes were entered and the status of the draft. With SharePoint Server 2007, version control is no longer an issue.
“With SharePoint Server 2007, meeting organizers can now post agenda items to a group workspace in the SharePoint site, along with a folder of the documents that will be used in the meeting,” says O’Neill. “This assures us that we’re all working from the same page at all times.”
Greater workflow efficiencies
Centralizing the content has also helped to automate workflow. The SharePoint portal automatically alerts workgroup members when a document is ready for review. This eliminates the need for authors to manually email drafts.
SharePoint Server 2007 also includes out-of-the-box workflow templates to make it easier for users to decide which workflows apply to their content, streamlining how they do business. In addition, a full workflow history is maintained so both end users and IT administrators can track the steps taken in their workflows and view upcoming steps in the workflow process.
“Now there are no questions as to where documents are sitting. We have deep insight as to the content and status of every document at any given moment, which is a huge benefit to our overall efficiency. It has given us back the hours we used to spend trying to track down documents,” adds O’Neill.
Improved insight
Peace Country Health needed a tracking solution that would help ensure the safety of thousands of mobile workers traveling across the vast territory. With the new tracking application based on SharePoint Server 2007 and Speech Server 2007, PCH mobile workers will be able to call from anywhere in the region and Peace Country Health will be able to track their travel progress against expected timelines.
“If a person doesn’t make it to their site within a specific timeframe, the system first tries to call the employee at a specified number. If the employee does not answer then the system contacts either a control centre or a supervisor,” says O’Neill. “As part of our Working Alone program, this application will be critical to ensuring the safety of staff who work alone or travel regularly throughout the region. It will also save us the hour a day we may spend trying to track down our staff.”
Increased collaboration
Through the unified messaging capabilities in Exchange Server 2007, PCH is looking forward to simplifying communications by routing voice mail and faxes directly to inboxes in Microsoft Outlook 2007 or Microsoft Outlook Web Access.
“With unified messaging, employees no longer need to return to the office to access their voice mail – they can just pick up all of their messages wherever they receive email. The flexibility this offers to our staff will be tremendous,” says O’Neill.
By consolidating communications systems, the organization also expects to see thousands of dollars in savings – from the cost of maintaining separate systems to long distance charges.
“Our previous unified messaging system was quite expensive per user. With Exchange Server 2007, unified messaging comes as part of the package. The cost savings for that alone will be exponential,” adds O’Neill.
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For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Compugen products and services, call (800) 378-5403 or visit the Web site at: www.compugen.com
For more information about Peace Country Health products and services, call 1 (800) 732-8981 or visit the Web site at: www.pchr.ca
