One of the first coworkers Eric Seitz met when he joined Missoula County in 2016 was a postage meter that had lost a step. Together they were responsible for all outgoing letters, flats, and parcels for the county government – to the tune of about 1500 pieces a day. He found his mechanical partner wasn’t keeping up.
“A big part of the county government is the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Health Department, that means license plates and medication from the clinics,” said Mr. Seitz. “So we can’t be slow, and we can’t be down for long.”
Shipping and mailing processes aren’t exactly seen as the heroes of business operations. But Kelley Connect understood Missoula County’s residents’ receipt of vital information and services came down to pieces-per-second and reliability, or as we like to think about it, equipment that works well, and works when it’s supposed to.
Mr. Seitz needed a partner with fresh legs in order to get what the citizens of Missoula County needed most, on time.
“Kelley Connect’s new sales guy just came by to say ‘hi.’ Then he looked at our situation and said we could do better and save money. He showed us what the Pitney Bowes P1550 could do, and the cost savings, and ultimately won the bid,” explained Mr. Seitz.
The result? Quite a few surprises. We knew we could properly onboard his new comrade in arms through installation and manual and virtual training – then fix anything that went wrong with prompt troubleshooting. It was the financial and emotional benefits of empowerment that added some spice to the sauce.
“The control is back in our hands,” confided Mr. Seitz. “Before, we outsourced a lot of bulk mail, to the tune of $6,000 to $10,000 a month. Now it’s all done in house, doesn’t cost any additional time, and is off the expense sheet. And that’s a stress reliever.”
A win for the well-being and health of the residents of Missoula County, a win for Mr. Seitz, and a win for budgets composed of taxpayer dollars.
“This is one of those jobs that people don’t think about,” confides Mr. Seitz. “But in the end, it’s very important. We’re not a department that takes a day off, because the mail has to run, just like flipping on a light.”
When the nation’s first civil air ambulance company is flying from point Alpha to point Bravo trying to save a life, cybersecurity shouldn’t be top of mind. We help make sure it stays that way.
Sheila Clough took over as CEO of Mercy Flights a little more than a year ago. As she was assessing the company from 10,000 feet, she saw trends we see a lot. When companies put their head down and do business, time can go by and new vulnerabilities can go undetected in the day to day, even for their existing IT partners. That’s the polite way of saying it. ‘It kept me up at night,’ gets to it a little quicker.
“We did a quick assessment of opportunities for our success, and our technology was fairly limited,” Ms. Clough said. “Cybersecurity made me extremely concerned. It’s easy for attackers to be able to get into our important, confidential information. “We’re a healthcare organization,” she continued. “One attack can cripple our ability to service our patients.”
The constant change of the way people work today added an extra dimension of challenges.
“Remote workers add a layer of vulnerability,” Ms. Clough said. “Onsite, our network could cover security fairly quickly. We asked Kelley Connect to help with those preventions and practices everywhere.“
As with all our partners, we were able to quickly run diagnostics to analyze immediate threats and vulnerabilities created by gaps in their security. With the added layer of HIPAA and patient privacy, Mercy Flights is just one of a number of growing businesses where cybersecurity infrastructure can be nearly as important as the business itself.
Though cybersecurity work is never done, we’re well on our way to accomplishing our mission. “People put their trust in Mercy Flights,” added Ms. Clough. “We rely on partners like Kelley Connect to allow us to have the trust and assurance in IT so we can focus on our mission: Taking care of patients.”
When it comes to healthcare partners serving patients, Kelley Connect’s job is to play part time weather anchor- we look at patterns and do some IT forecasting based on our knowledge, insight, and experience. This ensures the IT works when it’s supposed to so providers and patients aren’t left in the dark.
In the case of Women’s Health Center of Southern Oregon, any secure connectivity issues due to system-related barriers would, at best, distract from their mission: Providing comprehensive, compassionate care that helps each woman achieve her best self.
A few years back, this medium-sized but growing OB/GYN clinic faced the exciting yet not-always-fun task of building, and moving into, a new facility. Ms. Redfern knew the timing was right to redesign all things IT, from hardware and server infrastructure to tech support and robust phone and security platforms, in the interest of serving patients both faster and more consistently. It was a task beyond the reach of their pre-existing, two-person IT provider.
“We’re not large enough for internal IT, but with our growth we needed more range than two people could provide,” said Ms. Redfern.
Enter Kelley Connect. With the comfort, health and safety of their patients on the line, we knew our role was to deliver a post-move IT world where everything from networking and wireless to hardware and cybersecurity met the needs of providers and staff, and kept on humming, so they could focus on what mattered most: Providing care.
“Operations is so important, we have people running around with tablets, so we have to count on Kelley Connect for both router and device selection,” Ms. Redfern said. “We needed the latest and greatest, and they delivered, and keep up on it.”
Today, Women’s Health Center of Southern Oregon is settled into its new facility. Their efforts also earned the prestigious Safety Certification in Outpatient Practice Excellence (SCOPE) award – one of only two OB/GYN practices with SCOPE awards in the state. But there’s more work to be done.
“One of the other things that I appreciate is we get together with Kelley Connect to write a roadmap for what’s to come. In IT, you never go a year without needing to replace, refresh, or upgrade,” said Ms. Redfern.
When it comes to secure connectivity and cybersecurity in IT, we can’t predict the future. But Kelley Connect can build and maintain an infrastructure where every stakeholder can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact successfully. That allows us to have those proactive conversations about what the next best move is to deliver on the promise of bettering patients’ lives.
“We’re physician-owned,” said Ms. Redfern. “It’s nice to be able to go to shareholders and say, ‘this is what next year looks like to upgrade our routers, etc.’ And say, ‘this is what to expect.’”
That’s one of the things we are all about. Making sure our partners have a manageable and predictable plan for IT, so we they can focus on the health and wellness of those they serve.