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How Hospital IT Services Supplement an In-House Team

Company Profile

  • Industry: Hospital & Health Care
  • City & State: Lovington, New Mexico
  • Number of Locations: 14
  • Number of Employees: 450
  • Number of Licensed Beds: 25
  • Mandry Services Used: Mandry MANAGE™ and Mandry SECURE™
  • Website: nor-lea.org

Case Study Highlights

  • 63% decrease in phishing simulation failure in one year
  • Extra set of eyes on potential security risks
  • Concise metrics and customized reports
  • Strategic upgrade and budget planning

Nor-Lea Hospital District, developed in 1980, encompasses several community-based healthcare organizations in Lovington, Hobbs, and Tatum, New Mexico. These organizations include medical clinics, physician and cancer centers, home medical, a general hospital, and a 28-bed Medicare-certified facility. The mission of the district is to provide its communities with an exceptional experience.

“We are a rural hospital that was opened by the community and our focus as a non-profit is providing services to enhance the lives of our community members,” said Support Services Director Jessica Lizardo.

Jessica has been with Nor-Lea Hospital District for seven years. She began her career as a nurse and has since been promoted into her current role.

“Although one of our core focuses is primary care,” she continued, “Nor-Lea is a 28-bed inpatient hospital that has many programs including lab, radiology, therapy, surgery, and specialty physicians. As we continue to grow and add services, the need to keep up-to-date technology and security of that technology is a major focus so our caregivers are empowered to give the best care to their patients.”

To help with these hospital IT needs, Nor-Lea partners with Mandry Technology Solutions for network management and security including AICPA SOC 2® reports under SSAE 18.

“It is nice having a local partner that supports our needs as a rural hospital,” said Jessica. “This enables us to give our community the best care with the most up-to-date technology.”

Challenge

When Nor-Lea needed to update its electronic medical record (EMR) system, although the hospital district has a talented IT team in-house, the updates required complex changes that would distract from the team’s core duties. When we work with an organization that has its own IT team, those professionals continue to support internal needs like desktops, business-specific applications, and on-site hardware. We aim to extend their capabilities by supporting core network infrastructure, overall technology strategy, and high-end systems and processes.

“Updating our EMR required many changes within the network, and it was too big of a job for our team to manage by themselves,” said Jessica. “Having someone outside the trenches of the day-to-day operations helping roadmap targeted actions towards our longer-term goals has been very helpful.”

“Our initial phishing campaign had a 7 percent failure rate and that has steadily decreased with each quarterly campaign. The campaign one year after the initial had a failure rate of 2.6 percent.”

Solution

Nor-Lea decided to partner with Mandry, utilizing our Mandry MANAGE and Mandry SECURE offerings for its network management and security. We have even worked on special one-off projects together because of our team’s familiarity with Nor-Lea’s systems.

“Due to their knowledge of our network, Mandry has been contracted for several projects outside our ongoing management and security,” Jessica said.

Mandry MANAGE is our core service, where we keep systems up and running, interface directly with other technology vendors, give stakeholders visibility into performance, and are transparent about options when needs arise. The goal is to reduce the distractions an unstable IT environment can cause. Mandry SECURE is our cybersecurity offering where we provide certified experts to solve cybersecurity and regulatory compliance needs, particularly in the healthcare industry because of our team’s experience and credentials.

“As we planned and budgeted our upgrades for this year, Mandry helped guide what would be the best order to accomplish these tasks so the work was strategic and supported later changes. As a hospital, it is important to minimize downtime and impact on patient care and Mandry is always respectful of that need.”

Results

Jessica can attest to the many benefits Nor-Lea Hospital District has seen from partnering with an IT services company with healthcare-specific experience.

Enhanced Security

When it comes to security, Nor-Lea sees value in not self-attesting to the HIPAA-required Security Risk Assessment (SRA) and in using a third party to simulate phishing attempts.

“The security risk analysis being completed by someone outside our organization has provided a fresh set of eyes and perspective about potential security risks,” Jessica said. “Adding in phishing simulation and training has improved awareness amongst our staff about email security. Our initial phishing campaign had a 7 percent failure rate and that has steadily decreased with each quarterly campaign. The campaign one year after the initial had a failure rate of 2.6 percent.”

Reporting

Being able to provide metrics (like a 63 percent decreased failure rate on internal phishing campaigns) is in itself a benefit Nor-Lea has gained from working with an IT services company.

“Mandry services have enabled us to track important metrics concisely,” said Jessica, “and they have been willing to customize reports when needed. It was not feasible for us to manually track all that information, so this helps our staff focus on the improvements themselves.”

Guidance

Our goal as an organization is to get to know our clients so we can work together to determine how our services can help their business achieve its goals. As a service company, our success depends on our clients’ success, so we make every effort to communicate thoroughly and clearly and simplify processes wherever possible. We want to use the knowledge we’ve been fortunate enough to acquire over the years to provide services that have a meaningful impact on our clients’ businesses, and Nor-Lea has been an ideal partner for that information exchange.

“Configuration changes and software upgrades always have difficulties,” Jessica said, “but Mandry brings the extra hands and knowledge to help us ensure in the end that changes are successful. As we planned and budgeted our upgrades for this year, Mandry helped guide what would be the best order to accomplish these tasks so the work was strategic and supported later changes. As a hospital, it is important to minimize downtime and impact on patient care and Mandry is always respectful of that need.”

We are fortunate to work with organizations like Nor-Lea Hospital District and valuable team members like Jessica Lizardo who are as committed to a successful partnership as we are and who work alongside us to achieve meaningful results.

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