Partnering together, IS and RESO created a solution that not only avoided a gap in service, but more importantly developed an application with the goal to modernize and simplify.
Disruption bulletins are used by facilities and RESO teams on a daily basis to communicate disruptions that may impact the delivery of care and services across the Alaska region.
The Alaska region had historically used a homegrown web-based tool to communicate disruptions in both hospitals and clinics across the region. These email communications provide caregivers with notifications in the event of outages, road construction, earthquakes, and anything else that facilities would need to know to carry out their business. Additionally, this tool was instrumental during joint commission visits. The ability to continue this service was critical in the delivery of care.
IS discovered the homegrown application was hosted on a server about to be retired. Additionally, the enterprise contract needed to support the software was not renewed. Craig Patnode, senior manager, IS solution architect reached out to Dale Rahn, regional director environment of care, to collaborate and develop an action plan to deliver the new solution by April 1, 2021.
Together with a team from both IS and RESO, requirements for the new application to execute upon and a remediation plan to avoid any gap in service were outlined. The new application provides modernization to the previous version with an enhancement to allow disruption bulletins to be associated with facilities. Future versions will allow for emails to be sent to a wide audience for posting, as well as links at the ministry level home page to ease the way for our caregivers looking for critical updates.
The new solution is currently active as a pilot in Alaska and a new backlog of future features were created to execute upon. It is being socialized across the enterprise as a solution that can be implemented system-wide to help drive standardization.