Healthcare Group Saves 30% and Ensures Availability of Patient Services with VMware SD-WAN and TPx

Olios Health and its affiliate company, Synovation Medical Group, rely on advanced unified communications, telehealth, and video technologies to serve 1.2 million patients. To optimize quality of service (QoS) and keep these demanding applications running at their best, the companies need deep visibility and insight into network performance at multiple sites. As Olios Health grew, its MPLS became more complex and difficult to see and manage.

“We had 22 facilities and were aggressively expanding, increasing traffic and complexity of our environment,” said Damian Dyer, CIO of Olios Health/Synovation Medical Group. “We were looking for a way to better manage the quality of service for our applications, through better analytics and metrics. We had also started migrating to the cloud, so having a cloud ramp available was another key requirement.”

Olios Health turned to TPx, a leading managed services provider, to migrate its infrastructure to VMware SD-WANTM. TPx applied its deep technical expertise to simplify the transition and help ensure the deployment was fast and trouble-free.

“We needed network engineers that really understood the nuances of the network, voice traffic and application traffic, as well as its governance,” said Dyer. “There was a lot to keep track of, and TPx and their team provided a fully managed solution. The choice was a slam dunk and a no-brainer.”

Modernizing the WAN in six months

Working with TPx as its managed service provider, Olios rolled out the VMware SD-WAN solution across all of its sites with minimal downtime.

“We were moving at a pretty good clip to get everybody transitioned, and the hub site was the last site to be moved over,” said Dyer. “TPx did their magic behind the scenes to get the spoke sites moved, and then finally we moved over the hub. It was very painless, and we updated 22 facilities in six months, which was great.”

Improved visibility for improved reliability

With its managed service from TPx, Olios has gained access to a modern WAN infrastructure that delivers the observability and control it needs to keep critical applications for its organization and its healthcare partners running at their best.

“VMware SD-WAN gives us the visibility we need for better traffic management and network management, providing everything on a single pane of glass for the orchestrator,” said Dyer. “We have to meet some demanding SLAs. Being up 24x7, with consistent, reliable, fast access to applications and platforms is key to optimal patient care. Now we’re able to have better control of traffic, and we’re doing pretty awesome.”

In addition, working with TPx has enabled Olios to reduce the length of time for troubleshooting WAN issues from days to only minutes, ensuring optimized availability and performance.

“If an issue arises, we no longer have to spend lots of time chasing theories,” said Dyer. “You just go to the portal, take a look at what’s going on, who is doing it, and what’s causing it. You can look at timelines and the reports and comparative analysis, which translates to tons of savings in time.”

Streamlining management and freeing up staff

The flexible VMware SD-WAN was also able to accommodate the increased demand for telehealth and remote access to the EHR system during the COVID-19 pandemic, which Olios stated would not have been possible without the SD-WAN service.

“We completed our unified communications upgrade, which was very timely because it allowed approximately 30% of our workforce to work from home, take their phones, and stay productive just as if they were at the office,” said Dyer. “Our billing department, authorizations, and even our call center agents worked from home.”

The scalability of the new solution was key to enabling Olios and Synovation Medical Group to meet growing demands for telehealth services during the crisis.

“We were perfectly poised to meet the need for additional telehealth,” said Dyer. “At the beginning of the outbreak, we were able to expand to support approximately 50% of our patients. Since then, it has dropped to approximately 20%, and we still make it available to our patients.”
 

A future-proof solution supporting sustained growth

The VMware SD-WAN solution has provided a scalable template that lets Olios Health support its continued expansion by bringing new sites online fast, with cellular backup to supplement land lines in areas where broadband connections are limited or full.

“We went from 22 sites in 2017 and are now up to 36 sites,” said Dyer. “We can deploy a site within three weeks—it’s super fast. I can simply tell the management team to copy and paste the configuration from one SD-WAN box to the other. The only thing that changes is the subnet.”

With its flexible, scalable VMware solution in place, backed by the support and expertise of TPx, Olios Health has a platform capable of supporting additional patients and services as needed in the years to come.