IGEL solves for healthcare problems

A premier healthcare provider in the US with 76 locations, Diversicare was seeking ways to improve its razor thin margins, disparate EMR systems, and integration of new acquisitions as it was in an expanding “grow mode” in its business model.

Security and simplicity of transition were also key factors in Diversicare’s decision making process. “We acquire a new center and literally at midnight we make the switch to Diversicare’s IT infrastructure. The switch has to be fast, secure and seamless,” said Marbury.

In 2017, Diversicare began planning a transition from legacy, outdated equipment – notably fat clients – to a companywide, virtualized desktop environment, deploying thin clients. The company had recently acquired 22 centers which were already on a Citrix VDI platform and had a version of thin clients in use.

“Repurposing the old hardware gave us exactly what we needed at each center, even with many devices to deploy we were in and out within 30 minutes. The shift was basically transparent to the end users; and for IT, created a single, homogeneous desktop landscape that is easy to manage with a simple drag and drop interface.” said Shanna Persful, Director of IT Operations for Diversicare.

Mindful of its need to conserve capital, at the same time, moving the organization to a modern VDI platform, Diversicare, with Persful’s recommendation, made the decision to deploy a software driven, thin client solution that could literally be deployed overnight and move the company quickly into a standardized IGEL OS environment.

“Kiosks are a big part of our deployment and the thin client conversion software enabled us to save the costs of having to replace old kiosk platforms,” Marbury continued.

During a meeting at the Citrix Executive Briefing Center in Florida in 2017, Marbury discussed Diversicare’s challenges and goals with colleagues and came back with new insights into available endpoint solutions, including Raspberry Pi. However, Diversicare quickly deemed Raspberry Pi to be impractical due to its lack of management capabilities.

Soon after that, Diversicare Director of IT Operations, Shanna Persful, learned about an economical, thin client software from IGEL that sits on top of the existing legacy machines, transforming the equipment into a modern Linux OS, and working directly within the secure Citrix environment.

Diversicare began deploying IGEL in October 2017, and estimates its savings within the first year to be $635,000 – more than half of which will come from eliminating new hardware costs, and the remainder from reducing expenditures on third-party software licensing.

Modernizing the endpoint is a critical part of healthcare organizations like Diversicare becoming digitally competitive but the move is occurring in the reality of tight budgets, staffing shortages and increased pressures to protect patient data.

Citrix and thin client solutions offer a means of improving security with no data resident on the endpoint, tighter access controls, providing a more efficient and satisfying user experience and protecting budget by repurposing legacy equipment.