Healthcare Group Case Study: Assignment On Care Group

We have been engaged in business for some time, and have been very successful, however we need to re-examine our network configuration and infrastructure and identify that our network defenses are still reliable, before we make any changes. We need to take a hard look at our current configuration of host, services and our protocols within our organization. Data from a large number of penetration tests in recent years show most corporate networks share common vulnerabilities. Many of these

The company should analyze whether to model their software outsourcing business after the Indian software firm, Wipro. Many of the customers of Wipro, such as HP, already do business with Inventec and they could capitalize on their existing relationships. Greater software margins would increase their overall profit margins.

Cisco is clearly the one of Information Age companies. Cisco gives the priority on the Information Technology. In the case study, Cisco adopted strategy of systematic acquisitions and strategic partners, which proof that Cisco focuses on cooperated information. Cisco also concerned about standardization, flexibility, extensibility, and scalability. The decisions that Solvik and his team made during this case trends to emphasize how more Cisco becomes closer to the definition of Information Age company. They applied internet and intranet which is not so popular at that year for employee self-service, communication and distance learning, customer

Thesis: Lack of training and communication can cause employees to make simple, but crucial mistakes that jeopardize the success of the company and its current projects.

In order to be properly prepared for an outage in the magnitude of what transpired to the CareGroup network, systems and process control may have prevented this unfortunate event from occurring. Instituting a preventive approach to network functionality and security, along with a contingency plan to deal with failures or breaches to the system should have been in place.

The day-to-day operations within a healthcare facility are crucial to its success. The operation manager must stay focused on the delivery of state-of-the-art healthcare while looking to improve future technology at the facility. This entails not only equipment and technology but also assuring that state mandated regulations are closely followed. The operations manager can often be the difference between a well-maintained and operated hospital/clinic or a chaotic environment where the quality of patient care suffers. Clearly the stakes in any merger or acquisition are high when bringing two different cultures together under the same roof but when done properly it will form a collaborative, high-performance new company. The decisions made during this time about people, process, technology, and the organization will have a long-term impact, for better or worse. Therefore, it is vital to develop a detailed integration plan to ensure these decisions are taken with a long-term view.

1. The most significant problem was CareGroup suffered internet collapse in November 2002 and caused every software that required network unable to function. The main factor of this problem was the huge data transfers in short period of time and monopolized all networks resources and caused other users unable to connect to the service (the same idea of DDos attack). There were three underlying causes of this internet collapse. First of all, algorithms for computing alternative data paths were unable to function correctly. Due to the evolved of network, the network components were mostly rely on the service of major switch which meant that they lost the capability to find the new paths if they lost the services. Second, CareGroup IT did not use network traffic control system to efficiently distribute the resource. Although the data center was able to process 40 terabytes of data per day, it did not mean the system was good at handling extreme events. The last underlying cause is CareGroup IT did not frequently check the status of the router. The case referenced that CareGroup IT and the Cisco SWAT team found out the firmware in the old router was broken due to permanently written into the microchips.

After five major hospitals in Massachusetts merged together in 1996, CareGroup became the second largest collection of hospitals in its region. As the hospitals needed to increase their contracting power against health maintenance organizations, improve the quality of care while simultaneously decreasing costs and remain profitable in a complex price war, merging was their best option to remain successful and to provide the best treatment for patients. However, the hospitals initially experienced revenue loss over seven years as the group’s operations were decentralized and unstandardized. To remedy the issue, a new, cutting edge information technology system was developed successfully in 2002 and implemented.

Any network dependent enterprise should have procedures and process in place that facilitate quick fixture of problems in the network. It gets all the more important in the case of a sensitive industry like the healthcare institution - Being able to fix and troubleshoot problems faster could define the life and death of the patients

It was in 1977 that the United Healthcare United Health group was founded by Richard Burke. The headquarters of the company are in Minnetonka, Minnesota. This organization works towards the betterment of people's health, it help them in living a healthy life by providing them with the kind of health care that would be best for them. The main focus of United Healthcare which is a major division of the United Health group is to provide the people with better health benefits and coverage.

control and perspective of our colleagues. Camaraderie and atmosphere are suffering, placing us in jeopardy of destroying our active policies and their integrity. We must also be careful not to take these events lightly, jeopardizing our nucleus and strong core structure of talented workers. Workplace literacy and effective communication

The first lesson that Halamka learned is do not hesitate to contact experts. This is the most important lesson that the CareGroup’s IT team have to learnt. They waited one day after the systems had collapsed to call in Cisco. And during the day they have tried to fix the network by themselves without knowing what is the main and basic cause of the problem was.

CareGroup was aggressively growing and refining their IT & Networking operations. They were using Meditech software and Halamka was cutting costs/budgets rapidly, but in the midst of this transformation a key component was overlooked, the employees. Not training the employees on how to use the software, rather ensuring employees in IT were up to date with all of the changes to the network. Technology can only be so effective, once people are unaware of how the technology operates it can become more harmful than beneficial. The take away is that employees are essential to the function of your company, as you upgrade systems within your firm, educate your employees along the

Additional, here are a series of themes that explain most of the pressures for OSI to outsource. First of all, managers' concerns about cost and quality drive outsourcing. The same issues such as getting existing services for a reduced price at acceptable quality standard came up repeatedly. Second, failure to meet service standards can force management to find other ways of achieving reliability. Finding a company in which cumulative IT management neglect eventually culminated in an out-of-control situation from which the current IT

Cisco rapidly grew from a start-up to $500M global corporation by January, 1993 when the case begins with Pete Solvick, CIO of the company faced with the daunting task of upgrading its transaction systems and data warehouse. Cisco had exponential growth through the 1990s, averaging at one point an 80% compound annual growth rate while also accelerating new product development and introductions throughout its direct and indirect sales channels. Systems outages were becoming more common as were product shortcomings due to the IT systems supporting key processes becoming faulty and only partially operating the majority of the time. Clearly Cisco had outgrown its current transaction processes and data warehousing infrastructure.