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Scenic Bluffs Community Health Centers

Gaining stability and strategy with a single road map

$
+
in grant wins in just one year

By establishing a multi-year IT road map and updating it annually, Scenic Bluffs Community Health Centers has been able to stabilize its IT infrastructure, address security issues, implement modern technology and align tech to growth goals. By reinvesting saved IT dollars, the FQHC can now serve more patients in a historically underserved area.

The Challenge

Scenic Bluffs’ fragmented IT infrastructure couldn’t support its applications, users or multiple locations. Staff struggled even to print documents — a major issue for an FQHC. Like many nonprofits, Scenic Bluffs also did not carry deep technical expertise in-house, leaving the organization with a reliance on external IT providers and a reactionary approach to issues management. Leaders brought in Wipfli to determine how to solve Scenic Bluffs’ myriad of IT challenges.

The Solution

The big question: What to solve first? To prioritize solutions, Wipfli developed a three-year IT road map that first stabilized and then improved upon Scenic Bluffs’ IT infrastructure. Wipfli helped:

  • Deploy, maintain and monitor hardware and resolve printing issues.
  • Address network connectivity in all locations and implement wireless infrastructure.
  • Optimize new EMR software and make it accessible on all servers, backups and computers.
  • Provide advice to the new IT department leader and information systems specialist.
Because of Wipfli, our executive team and board can rely on a strategic IT plan and budget aligned to our priorities and growth goals. Our ability to make informed decisions has had an amazing impact on our staff, who can now focus on serving more of our community.
Mike McKearn, IT director at Scenic Bluffs

The results

Quickly tackling low-hanging fruit boosted Wipfli’s credibility with the board and encouraged further investment into modernizing IT infrastructure and applications. Scenic Bluffs has seen significant annual savings on technology and has reinvested those dollars into expanding its geographic footprint and providing more patient services, including expanding two integrated clinic sites and adding a new single-service location and 12+ school-based service sites.

By annually updating the road map, Wipfli has put Scenic Bluffs in a better position to secure grants to pay for IT investments. Grant wins have increased, including multi-million-dollar awards that include significant allocations for IT infrastructure.

Scenic Bluffs most recently has engaged additional Wipfli security offerings to help protect against security incidents and make recommendations for security improvements, including a VPN setup change that will help prevent data breach attempts.

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new service sites added