HOPKINTON, Mass., May 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- EMC Corporation, the
world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced that
Valley Baptist Health System has embraced an information infrastructure to
quickly and cost-effectively access patients' medical histories, legal and
financial information, and other records critical to providing quality patient
care.
Jim Barbaglia, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Valley
Baptist Health System, said, "We pride ourselves on being patient-centric, so
we need to have access to a patient's electronic health record information at
all times. With EMC managing and protecting all of our medical and business
information, we have the technology to deliver high level care around the
clock. And, as this information ages, we move it automatically to more
cost-effective storage to help lower our operational costs and increase the
value of our investments."
Previously, the 800-plus bed healthcare provider kept radiology images --
such as X-rays, mammograms and sonograms -- on films and stored other patient
and medical information on an HP storage device. Using FUJIFILM Medical
System's Picture Archiving Communications System (PACS), Valley Baptist now
digitizes the radiology images for storing on EMC CLARiiON(R) systems and uses
EMC DiskXtender(TM) software to automatically archive images from CLARiiON to
EMC Centera(R) content-addressed storage after 12 months as defined by
clinical protocol. The Valley Baptist Health cardiology department has adopted
this same approach to manage cardiology images using the GE Healthcare
Centricity CV PACS also integrated with CLARiiON and Centera.
"It's vastly more efficient and reliable to store our radiology and
cardiology images on EMC," said Joey Govea, PACS Administrator. "With the old
system, the films could be easily lost, damaged or take 30 minutes to a full
hour to retrieve. Now, access is instantaneous enabling our radiologists and
cardiologists to review more procedures per workday. We're also saving $28,000
per month on film and that doesn't include the cost of people who process,
retrieve and deliver the film, accelerating our ROI."
Valley Baptist Medical Center-Brownsville, one of the hospitals that is
part of the Texas-based health system, worked with EMC to implement its
information infrastructure, which embraces policy-based solutions to
automatically move historic data to lower-cost storage systems. As part of
this strategy, Valley Baptist stores information from critical applications
such as PACS, time and attendance, finance, PeopleSoft and Microsoft Exchange
on a CLARiiON storage area network (SAN). Valley Baptist also uses Centera for
storing medical power of attorney, advanced medical directives, insurance
documentation and billing information. By deploying a tiered storage strategy,
Valley Baptist Health efficiently and reliably manage its information
retention policies to meet Protected Health Information (PHI) regulations.
"We realized 98 percent of our physicians make comparisons -- such as the
progress of tumor growth or shrinkage -- in the first several months from when
the images are first captured," said Ignacio Silva Director of IT operations.
"Because of this care protocol, we store our medical images on the EMC
CLARiiON for a year. This enables us to make better use of the high
performance SAN. After this period, medical images are automatically migrated
with EMC DiskXtender to EMC Centera for long-term archiving. This approach
improves our SAN performance and speeds backup processes."
Valley Baptist Health also uses numerous software tools -- such as EMC
MirrorView(TM), EMC Replication Manager, EMC SnapView(R) and EMC PowerPath(R)
-- to replicate information to a second data center for business continuity
and to maximize the availability of vital patient information stored on the
100-terabyte EMC information infrastructure. Additionally, this software
enables the healthcare provider to reduce the time it takes to perform
application and operating system upgrades.
"EMC provides the reliability in systems and services we need to deliver
the highest quality patient care," said Silva. "The software tools are easier
to use and the system is more robust than what we had before."
About Valley Baptist Health System
Valley Baptist Health System, with headquarters in Harlingen, Tex., has
earned a reputation as a healthcare leader with its dedicated staff, modern
facilities, state-of-the-art technology and commitment to quality,
compassionate faith-based patient care. The not-for-profit health system is
one of the largest in South Texas with more than 800 beds. The health system
includes Valley Baptist Medical Center-Harlingen and Valley Baptist Medical
Center-Brownsville, among other health care resources for the community.
About EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider
of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable
organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value
from their information. Information about EMC's products and services can be
found at http://www.EMC.com.
EMC, Centera, CLARiiON, SnapView and PowerPath are registered trademarks
of EMC Corporation. DiskXtender and MirrorView are trademarks of EMC
Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
SOURCE EMC Corporation
