Sherrill House, Inc. is a not-for-profit skilled nursing and rehabilitation center. They provide three key services to the local community: short-term rehabilitation, traditional long-term care, and a Special Care Program for individuals with Alzheimer’s and dementia.
As an active healthcare nonprofit, Sherrill House depends heavily on its IT. They need reliable and secure technology in order to provide effective care for their patients. Furthermore, all of this needs to be achieved within the boundaries of a strict budget.
That’s why Sherrill House works with RetroFit Technologies.
Sherrill House’s Partnership With RetroFit Technologies Grew Over The Years
At first, Sherrill House only used RetroFit Technologies for specific services. For some time, they were only responsible for overseeing Sherrill House’s infrastructure and assisting with projects on an as-needed basis.
“I only had RetroFit Technologies in here at the beginning to do core management; one or two servers, my firewall, that’s all they did,” says Adam J. Fumia, Director of IT, Sherrill House, Inc. “If I had a big project to do, I went through RetroFit Technologies.”
However, it wasn’t long before Adam and the Sherrill House team realized they needed additional support. The ever-increasing threat of cybercrime soon affected the security of their patients’ data; the Sherrill House staff knew they needed experts to assist with their cybersecurity. After all, the healthcare sector is the most popular target for cybercriminals today.
“We got hit with a few things that were disturbing, so we went back to RetroFit Technologies, and we increased their presence,” says Adam. “I got some of their backup and data recovery products.”
Over the time that they’ve worked together, Sherrill House has slowly trusted RetroFit Technologies with more and more responsibilities. Cybersecurity was a key factor in that development — as cybercrime threats became more prevalent, Adam knew Sherrill House’s cybersecurity needed to be enhanced.
“We increased our relationship incrementally with them over time,” says Adam.
Eventually, Adam made it as clear as he could to Sherrill House’s leadership: if they did not invest in additional cybersecurity support and resources, he could not guarantee the security of their patients’ data. If they wanted to be confident in their organizational security, they would need RetroFit Technologies’ help.
Cybersecurity is a major concern for healthcare organizations in New England. That’s why RetroFit Technologies provides robust IT security services in order to help protect organizations of all shapes and sizes from the threats in today’s online world.
“I went back to RetroFit Technologies again and we set up a fully managed program for us that would do all the things we needed it to do,” says Adam. “Help desk, patch management, managed antivirus, and all of these things.”
Whereas at one point Adam had IT assistants and other on-staff personnel, today, Sherrill House’s IT team is made up of him and RetroFit Technologies. Outside of a few vendors and a consultant, RetroFit Technologies is Adam’s primary IT support resource.
“I’ve had a series of part-time assistants over the years, but they were not computer people,” says Adam. “Now I don’t, it’s really just me and RetroFit Technologies, as well as a consultant and another vendor.”
The increased investment in RetroFit Technologies has paid off for Sherrill House. Everything they need from RetroFit Technologies, they get.
“There are undeniable results — they are able to do the things that they were supposed to be doing,” says Adam.
RetroFit Technologies Helps Sherrill House Work With Vendors To Solve Their EHR Issue
On more than one occasion, RetroFit Technologies has helped Sherrill House solve a critical issue that posed real risks to their quality of care and patient data integrity. In one instance, Adam was stuck working between Sherrill House’s many vendors to find the source of a SaaS issue.
“We’re a healthcare organization and we use a number of SaaS systems,” says Adam. “One of them is our EHR, and we were having trouble connecting to the landing portal. This issue was causing clinical and business office staff to be continually “kicked out” of the application. It was getting to the point of affecting patient care.”
Unfortunately, solving this EHR issue was not as simple as getting in touch with the EHR vendor. As is often the case with IT issues that involve multiple parties, no single party is willing to take responsibility for it.
“The EHR vendor was saying it was our problem or our ISP’s problem, and of course, the ISP was saying it was our problem or the EHR vendor’s problem,” says Adam. “I was stuck in the middle, and the bottom line was that none of our nurses could access our electronic health records.”
Vendor management is a key component of effective IT support. Any services or solutions that are delivered over the Internet, or via a cloud solution, involve at least two parties in addition to the user. When an issue occurs, it can be very easy for each vendor to point fingers at the other, and leave the user stuck playing man-in-the-middle. Fortunately for Adam, he was able to enlist RetroFit Technologies’ help.
“I reached out to RetroFit Technologies and said we need to fix this,” says Adam. “They took me seriously, which is a big deal. Most of these places don’t take you seriously.”
RetroFit Technologies offered extensive assistance with analyzing the problem and dealing directly with the vendors. Once the RetroFit Technologies team had gathered the necessary information about the issue and attempted the usual fixes for such a problem, they were then able to return to the vendors and convince them it was an issue on their end.
“When it was only me against them, it was at best a “David and Goliath” story, but with RetroFit Technologies having my back, I was able to wear that like a suit of armor, and go back to battle the dragons,” says Adam. “The guys gave me verbiage and information to throw back at the vendor, and also made 3-way phone calls with me to the SaaS vendor battling with them and asking the questions only competent engineers know how to ask.”
Thanks to RetroFit Technologies’ committed support and assistance with managing the vendors, Adam was eventually taken seriously. The EHR vendor was able to confirm an issue on their end and promptly resolve it.
“Finally, they admitted that they were having load balancing issues,” says Adam. “I never would have gotten to that point, and it would have put patient care in jeopardy for a much longer time if it hadn’t been for RetroFit Technologies.”
RetroFit Technologies’ expertise gave Adam the information and support he needed to get through to the vendors. This helped Adam out in the long run as well, past this initial incident. When another issue occurred the following weekend, the SaaS vendor took it seriously from the very start.
“I was able to again call in the RetroFit Technologies cavalry, who took the time to help me once again make sure it was not an internal issue,” says Adam. “This time when I went back to the vendor, they bowed immediately because they knew we knew what we were talking about. And the SaaS vendor again was forced to admit it was their issue and that they were working on it.”
RetroFit Technologies Helped Sherrill House Address A Core Switch Failure Over Easter Weekend
Another key example of RetroFit Technologies’ committed support is when they assisted with an infrastructure problem that Sherrill House encountered over Easter weekend. The nonprofit’s core switch began presenting issues, which quickly affected the organization’s entire IT environment.
“Every system in the building is impacted because everything goes through the core switch,” says Adam.
Fortunately, Adam knew he could call RetroFit Technologies for help. He didn’t have to worry about this third-party company making him wait until after the holiday — he could count on RetroFit Technologies.
“RetroFit Technologies took me seriously,” says Adam. “Their dedicated staff helped me get to the root of the issue.”
It turned out to be a complicated problem that took most of the weekend to solve. The core switch has presented two issues, one of which masked the other, obfuscating the entire process.
“This was over Easter weekend, and there was somebody on the other end of the phone the entire time,” says Adam.
Thanks to RetroFit Technologies’s committed support, through a holiday weekend, no less, Sherrill House was able to address the issue and ensure it did not affect the integrity or availability of their patients’ health data. Both over the phone and in person, the RetroFit Technologies staff helped Adam avoid a catastrophe and keep the nonprofit in operation.
“We hashed out a crazy idea to bypass the bad switch and keep things running for the sake of the safety of our residents and patients and RetroFit Technologies made it a reality — successfully,” says Adam.
This level of committed support is not something Adam gets from every vendor he works with. He recognizes that RetroFit Technologies delivers an uncommonly effective service.
“Other places would just leave you hanging,” says Adam. “Unlike so many of our other vendors, RetroFit Technologies is a true partner to us and genuinely seems to care about us and what we do.”
RetroFit Technologies Handles All Of Sherrill House’s Nonprofit IT Needs
As a nonprofit, Sherrill House is required to bid out and ensure they are spending the money effectively. On a regular basis, Adam does his due diligence to find out if another IT company could offer the same services and quality of support as RetroFit Technologies at the same price.
The result?
“To this day, I have yet to find another company that does all of the things that RetroFit Technologies does,” says Adam. “They are the full package for us.”
The RetroFit Technologies team is proud to play a small part in RetroFit Technologies’ mission. By making sure their IT is functional and cost-effective, the RetroFit Technologies team helps the Sherrill House team care for their patients.
That’s what Adam and the Sherrill House team want from their IT. They want to be confident it will work as expected, day in and day out. It needs to be responsive and secure — and with RetroFit Technologies’ help, that’s what they get.
“I don’t know that I’d be able to operate something like this without what RetroFit Technologies does,” says Adam. “They’ve been doing it excellently for all these years.”