Fidelity Health Care
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary
Company Background
Current Networking Setup
Project Constraints/Assumptions
Project Plan – Phase 1
Project Plan – Phase 2
Project Plan – Phase 3
System Requirements – Windows 2000 Advanced Server
System Requirements – Windows 2000 Professional
Windows 2000 Implementation Plan
Windows 2000 Print Implementation Plan
Conclusion
References
Executive Summary
Fidelity Health Care, FHC, is the largest home care company in the Dayton, OH area. The company was founded 23 years ago with just two employees. Today, there are 100 administrative employees and 350 employees working in the field. As the company has grown, so have their information technology needs and the equipment and software has been added to at periodic stages. The result is now a mixture of old and new technology. The Information Technology Department has been asked to review the companys infrastructure and develop a plan for updating the equipment and software necessary to ensure the company has a solid foundation and prepares for the future. This paper reviews the current state of the company and the plans for improvement with their information technology needs.
Company Background and Project Purpose
FHC is part of a health partnership and includes the two largest hospitals, as well as hundreds of physicians in the Dayton, OH area. As patients are prepared for discharge, they are evaluated to determine if they would benefit from follow up treatment at home. FHC provides a variety of services including nurses, therapists, home care aides, social workers, infusion therapy and durable medical equipment. All of the services are provided in the comfort of the patients home.
This type of business can provide some technical challenges since it is imperative to have the most current information readily available for the field clinicians. The professional staff (nurses, therapists and social workers) carries laptops that contain a small database filled with the necessary information for each patient. Documentation regarding physician orders and services received by a patient is included in the professional staffs database. One technical challenge FHC faces is maintaining the integrity of the data between the laptops and the main servers. Therefore, the professional staff is required to perform a transfer process that sends information back and forth between the laptop and main server.
The paraprofessional staff (home care aides) uses paper documentation at this time. They are required to keep personal records of important clinical information regarding each patient in order to provide the best service possible. Part of the thrust of this project will be to find an automated system for the paraprofessional staff.
All administrative employees have desktop computers that are loaded with a variety of applications. There is a mixture of Windows 95 and Windows 98 operating systems, as well as some old and some newer computers. Each administrative employee has access to the clinical systems so they may review and update information pertinent to the patients care.
Current Networking Setup
FHC has a total of 13 servers purchased over the last 7 years, which are networked by a Cisco switch. Most of the cabling was switched to Ethernet cabling about 3 years ago. However, there are still 3 servers that utilize token ring connected to the network. The IT staff has notice some latency problems and general networking speed that will be addressed in this project.
It has been determined with planning and new equipment; the IT department can eliminate 4 of the 13 servers. The servers are currently running a variety of operating systems. This makes support more difficult. It was also determined that the IT department recently discovered not all servers have anti-virus software running. Part of the plan will be to completely rebuild each server. In addition, the IT department will add a DameWare client. This will enable the support staff to connect remotely to provide better support to the users.
The backup system is the last piece of equipment that needs to be updated. The current backup system is about 8 years old and does not work properly. Another discovery by the IT department is that only half of the companys data is being backed up every night. This is a huge problem since FHC relies heavily on computerized data.
Project Constraints/Assumptions
The following is a list of items that the IT department has identified to be completed during this project:
Every piece of equipment will be evaluated and determined whether it can be used or replaced.
The remaining token ring connections will be removed from the network.
The Novell servers will be removed from the network.
The Cisco switch will be evaluated for improvements.
The operating systems on desktops and servers will be updated and made consistent.
A new backup system will be put in place.
All software applications will be evaluated for need and efficiency. New software will also be evaluated.
Project Plan – Phase 1
After reviewing the hardware and software currently used by FHC, the team developed a plan to update their IT needs to meet their current business processes as well as plan for future needs. The below list details the items to be addressed in Phase 1:
A new server will be purchased to house the companys large practice management application. The server will have load balancing capabilities and multiple network cards.
Three smaller servers will replace the older servers experiencing performance issues. These servers will have an additional network card installed for backup purposes.
The five newest servers will be rebuilt and an additional network card will be installed for backup purposes.