[ISN] Earthquake law pushes hospitals to spend big on IT

From: InfoSec News (isn@private)
Date: Wed Feb 18 2004 - 01:54:27 PST

  • Next message: InfoSec News: "[ISN] Microsoft to Hackers: Drop That Code!"

    http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/recovery/story/0,10801,90226,00.html
    
    By Bob Brewin and Patrick Thibodeau
    FEBRUARY 16, 2004
    
    A California law that mandates earthquake-proof hospitals is sparking
    massive investments in IT infrastructure upgrades by health care
    companies in the state, starting with the hardening of data centers
    but also including the deployment of faster networks, wireless systems
    and other new technologies.
    
    For example, Sacramento-based Sutter Health expects to spend the
    better part of $1 billion on technology upgrades at its 26 hospitals
    over the next 10 years as a result of the law, CIO John Hummel said
    last week. As the not-for-profit company rebuilds some of its
    facilities to comply with the law, it plans to invest in new bandwidth
    and storage capabilities in an effort to meet processing demands well
    into the future, he said.
    
    Mark Zielanzinski, CIO at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, said
    his facility is building a data center and demolishing its existing
    one as part of an overhaul of its entire campus to meet the law's
    requirements. The new data center is due to be fully operational by
    March 2005.
    
    In addition, the data center reconstruction prompted a server
    consolidation and upgrade project, Zielanzinski said. El Camino
    Hospital is consolidating more than 150 smaller servers onto two
    Unisys Corp. ES 7000 systems, each of which can support up to 32 Intel
    processors. A matching set of servers is being installed at a new
    disaster recovery site 120 miles away, in more geologically stable
    Sacramento, he added.
    
    The law, known as the California Facilities Seismic Safety Act, was
    passed in 1994 after the Northridge earthquake struck north of Los
    Angeles and caused $3 billion in damage to 23 hospitals. But the
    measure is just now becoming an urgent matter for many health care
    companies, which must comply by 2008 -- or 2013 if extensions are
    granted.
    
    The California HealthCare Association estimates that it will cost $24
    billion to earthquake-proof or rebuild a total of about 2,700 hospital
    buildings throughout the state. IT costs could account for $2.4
    billion to $3.6 billion of that, said Gerard Nussbaum, a consultant at
    Kurt Salmon Associates Inc. in Atlanta.
    
    The staggering costs played a big role in convincing Sacramento-based
    Tenet Healthcare Corp. to seek buyers for 19 of its 36 California
    hospitals. Tenet last month said it would cost $1.6 billion to bring
    the facilities being divested into compliance with the state's seismic
    standards.
    
    But for all the expenses it's generating, the earthquake law gives
    health care firms an opportunity to upgrade their IT systems, says
    Nussbaum and CIOs such as Sutter Health's Hummel. It provides an
    impetus for hospitals to develop IT installations that are "truly 21st
    century," Nussbaum said.
    
    Sutter Health has already replaced five of its 26 hospitals and needs
    to completely rebuild six more. Hummel said the company is looking to
    take full advantage of the situation on the IT side. For example, his
    plan calls for storage capacity to grow at a rate of 12TB to 15TB per
    year to support digital imaging and other data-intensive medical
    systems.
    
    Sutter also plans to run fiber-optic circuits to every floor of the
    new hospitals to support the exchange of digital images, as well as
    new systems such as electronic medical records and computerized
    physician order entry. In addition, it's building in wireless systems
    to provide doctors and nurses with access to data from anywhere inside
    a hospital, Hummel said.
    
    Joy Grosser, CIO at the University of California, Irvine Medical
    Center, agreed that the earthquake law is creating opportunities to
    plan from scratch IT infrastructures designed to support new systems.  
    Grosser said that in her case, that includes deploying new wireless
    networks to accommodate devices such as tablet PCs as well as
    broadband networks to support the increasingly high-tech systems in
    operating rooms.
    
    The mandate has required extensive retrofitting and upgrading of the
    technology infrastructure at White Memorial Medical Center in Los
    Angeles, said Brian Smolskis, the facility's IT director. His staff is
    installing new fiber-optic cabling, backup power supplies and
    fire-suppression systems in the hospital's data center and rebracing
    its server racks, Smolskis said, adding that none of the changes is a
    simple task.
    
     
    
    -
    ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org
    
    To unsubscribe email majordomo@private with 'unsubscribe isn'
    in the BODY of the mail.
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Feb 18 2004 - 05:01:21 PST