CASE STUDY

How Aultman Hospital is using technology to keep
patients, families, and staff safe during COVID-19“We haven’t faced an enemy like we areAultman Hospital, located in Canton, Ohio, is part of the Aultman
facing today in 102 years. We are at war.”
Health Foundation, a not-for-profit integrated healthcare
system that includes Aultman Orrville Hospital, Aultman Alliance
Community Hospital, the locally managed health insurance
Mike DeWine
provider AultCare, The Aultman Foundation and Aultman College.
Governor
With 1,032 beds, over 800 active physicians, and a team ofState of Ohio
more than 7,000 employees, Aultman is Stark County’s largest
provider of healthcare services. Ranked by Forbes in 2019 as
one of America’s best employers by state, Aultman has faced
unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic in
fulfilling the mission to lead its community to improved health. Principal among these challenges are protecting the safetyof healthcare workers, patients, and their families, and dealing with the financial impacts of the crisis due to the cancellationof non-emergency procedures.

EARLY ACTIONS ON COVID-19 HELPED FLATTEN THE CURVE
Rafael Gonzalez is the Chief Technology Officer of Aultman Hospital. We spoke with him amidst the peak of the crisis tobetter understand how the hospital is coping during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The state of Ohio took a different approach to the crisis than other states by issuing one of the nation’s earliest shelterin-place (SIP) orders on March 23,” Gonzalez said. “Although this was considered by many at the time to be controversial,
it has helped us tremendously in keeping the curve down.” While it’s clear now that such measures have helped save lives,
little attention has been given in the media to the economic consequences of the crisis for regional healthcare organizations
like Aultman. Cancellation of non-essential procedures, doctor’s appointments, and outpatient visits has had a devastating
financial impact on the country’s healthcare providers.
Aultman was among the first hospitals to stop visitations. This was a difficult decision, according to Gonzalez, given
Aultman’s community-driven mission of commitment to the health of patients and family members. Among the many earlychallenges Gonzalez faced was how to keep patients and their families connected, and how to enable non-clinical staff towork remotely.
KEEPING PATIENTS AND STAFF CONNECTED
Ensuring secure connectivity during the crisis has been difficult for IT teams at all organizations. For healthcareorganizations, it has been critical for ensuring ongoing operations and keeping patients connected with their families. Under
the direction of Gonzalez, the Aultman IT team was able to move swiftly on both fronts. They had a project in place using
mobile workstations that was repurposed to enable each unit within the hospital to provide video conferencing between
patients and their families. “This virtual visitation program was tremendously popular with patients and staff. Patientsconnected with family members from across the country. One patient, who couldn’t speak because of an intubation, used awhiteboard the staff provided to communicate with family members in Florida and Colorado,” Gonzalez said.

Doing more with less and using technology to support new
challenges like controlling patient and staff traffic flow andsocial distancing will be essential to Aultman’s success.

To connect more than 1,000 remote, non-clinical workers, the IT team set
up 300 virtual desktops, adding additional storage to enable these, alongwith VPN connections for laptop users. “Getting the backend processes
ready to support that many users, in a matter of weeks, was quite stressful.
But our team worked around the clock to make it happen,” Gonzalez said.
SUPPORT FROM PARTNERS HAS BEEN CRITICAL
Dealing with the financial impacts of the COVID-19 crisis represents anongoing challenge. The Aultman executive and management teams,excluding clinical staff, all took pay cuts. “Several of our key technology
partners have stepped up to the plate, and for that we are eternallygrateful,” Gonzalez said. This support included free additional data storage
from Infinidat, extending total capacity to over 1 petabyte, free extended
trial licenses from VMware, and increased bandwidth from Spectrum tosupport remote users.
Asked to comment on lessons learned during the crisis and changes in IT
strategy moving forward, Gonzalez says, “From a technical perspective, weused duct tape and creativity to get things up and running. Moving forward,
we need to rethink everything, especially from a financial perspective. Doing
more with less, being able to scale cost-effectively, and using technology
to support new challenges like controlling patient and staff traffic flow andsocial distancing will be essential to our success.”
To learn more about how Infinidat can help your organization scale towin, visit Infinidat.com.

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“Early measures by thestate helped us flatten
the curve. Early actions
to enable non-clinicalstaff to work remotely
and to keep patients andtheir families connected
were among our highest
technical priorities.”
Rafael Gonzalez
Chief Technology Officer
Aultman Hospital