Netgain

For almost 50 years, Multicare Associates has provided a wide array of primary care services.

An internal IT staff managed Multicare Associates’ IT environment for 30 providers and 200 staff across three locations. The in-house IT staff supported the primary care clinic’s users, applications, and their infrastructure. But CEO Matt Brandt had concerns about the practice’s aging IT environment and wanted to implement a new EHR solution.

A typical physician practice may use Microsoft as their cloud provider for Office 365, use their EHR software provider for their EHR, use a private cloud provider for their practice management and their PACS storage on-site. These solutions all have separate logins, support contacts and service level agreements.

Over 80 percent of healthcare providers are using some form of cloud services within their practice, according to HIMSS Analytics’ 2016 Cloud Survey. Patient engagement and empowerment tools are the most common tools in the cloud (35%), followed by health information exchange (34%), back office solutions (18%) and business continuity and disaster recovery functions (13%).