CATHOLIC HEALTHCARE WEST

Customer Success Story

AN EXCERCISE IN SUCCESS CHALLENGE: Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) is a family of more than 60,000 caregivers and staff dedicated to delivering excellent care to diverse communities across Arizona, California and Nevada. As the eighth largest hospital provider in the nation business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) planning is an ongoing priority for the organization. An integral part of the planning is systematic, comprehensive, and rigorous testing across hundreds of systems in a widely distributed environment. SUNGARD SOLUTION: SunGard Availability Services provides recovery facilities, equipment, consulting, and support for CHWs annual BC/DR test exercises. These services assist CHW in continually refining and strengthening their BC/DR program to ensure a swift, seamless recovery in the event of a business interruption.

A true sense of partnership exists between us. When it comes to disaster recovery exercises, we never know what we will actually find. SunGard has always allowed us to learn and grow in the testing environment. Their attitude and approach have enabled us to experience more positive and successful outcomes.
Patrick Ridder, Disaster Recovery Manager at CHW

Founded in 1986 and headquartered in San Francisco, Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) has diverse needs for serving patients from rural to urban areas and in community hospitals to nationally recognized centers of excellence. Each of the CHW clinical settings shares an unwavering dedication to providing high quality services to their patients and communities. Ensuring for seamless business continuity and data recovery is an integral part of the patient care objectives. Chris Balsino, Account Executive for SunGard Availability Services and the primary liaison with CHW, comments on the hospital systems commitment to business continuity: Developing, implementing, and executing an effective BC/DR program is challenging for organizations of any size. For an organization with the breadth and complexity of CHW, it can be a monumental task, but they have taken it completely in stride. Their BC/DR program is proactive, comprehensive, and detailed. And they never consider it to be final: they are always seeking ways to refine their plan to keep it attuned to every change in their business, in society, and in technology.

STRENGTHENING EXERCISES One of the key ways CHW keeps their BC/DR plan finely-honed is through yearly testing, although Patrick Ridder, Disaster Recovery Manager at CHW, prefers to refer to testing as disaster recovery exercises. He explains, We learned some time ago that if you refer to something as a test, people immediately shift into a pass/fail mindset. Thats not what we want to communicate, and its not what we want to accomplish. Instead, we call these exercises because when you exercise, you become stronger. That is our goal - to become stronger all the time. For ten months of every year, specific areas or applications of CHW plan for the hypothetical worst-case scenario. Then, for two months, they prepare to go through 72 hours of complete and stringent BC/DR testing, utilizing SunGards state-of-theart recovery equipment and facilities. Recently, CHW tested one of the electronic medical record (EMR) systems that handles extensive amounts of clinical, financial and operational data and manages many of the daily patient care functions in the hospitals. There were exceptional challenges with this exercise; CWH needed consultants with knowledge of a specific software and operating system, as well as experience and insight into the processes that had to be followed for a successful recovery. SunGard was able to provide these specialized skills, and its global footprint allowed for the remote and onsite support that was critical to managing the overall process. While this exercise represented an extreme disaster recovery situation, CHW benefited greatly from practicing and preparing for BC/DR in a worst-case scenario. SunGard helped us meet every challenge involved in this exercise, Ridder affirms. When we hit an impasse in the exercise, they suggested alternate recovery strategies. They also helped us identify gaps in our operational process, and showed us how to resolve issues in recovering to different locations and to dissimilar hardware.

Catholic Healthcare West

We learned some time ago that if you refer to something as a test, people immediately shift into a pass/fail mindset. Instead, we call these exercises because when you exercise, you become stronger. That is our goal: to become stronger all the time.
Patrick Ridder, Disaster Recovery Manager at CHW

A TRUSTED PARTNER CHW began their relationship with SunGard over ten years ago, working with the SunGard team to create a solid BC/DR program. Over the years, SunGard has provided effective disaster recovery testing and solutions as this large hospital system continues to evolve. Ridder reflects, A true sense of partnership exists between us. When it comes to disaster recovery exercises, we never know what we will actually find. SunGard has always allowed us to learn and grow in the testing environment. Their attitude and approach have enabled us to experience more positive and successful outcomes. This partnership is characterized by constant dialogue through every stage of the testing process, including:

BEST PRACTICES, BEST RESULTS Testing is a key best practice when forming an effective BC/DR program. Ridder enumerates the top three benefits CHW has gained by engaging in their annual disaster recovery exercises: 1. Enhanced continuity. Testing both validates recovery documentation and provides an opportunity for improving it. The result is system documentation that any person could use in any crisis to ensure business continuity. 2. Enhanced compliance. As a medical organization, CHW faces strict regulatory requirements for business continuity. Testing demonstrates conclusively that their BC/DR plans are effective. 3. Enhanced confidence. Testing allows the CHW staff to address the system holistically, from equipment to interfaces, in a way that cannot be done under ordinary circumstances. They also receive hands-on training in the management and execution of all recovery and validation processes. This experience gives the staff the confidence they need to recover small pieces of data on a daily basis, and system-wide data in the event of an actual crisis. Ridder concludes, We truly and I cant stress this enough feel that SunGard is a partner who is vested in our success. This relationship has been integral to the success of our BC/DR program.

Preparation: determining what area or application

needs to be tested, and ensuring that all the necessary equipment, infrastructure, and facilities are available for the test itself.

Support: being on-call throughout the test to turn even

the most challenging obstacles into opportunities for growth and advancement.

Remediation: making recommendations for ways to

reduce recovery time objectives and to strengthen the BC/DR program. Ridder emphasizes the benefits of this ongoing dialogue. My account representative has his finger on the pulse of CHW at all times. This makes him strong and efficient, because there is nothing in the disaster recovery area that he is not aware of. He can then offer SunGard solutions to us from the standpoint of knowledge, and from a true understanding of our concerns, issues, and needs. I consider this to be one of the greatest advantages of working with SunGard.

About SunGard Availability Services SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery, managed IT, information availability consulting services, business continuity management software to over 10,000 customers in North America and Europe. SunGard Availability Services | 680 East Swedesford Road | Wayne, PA 19087 | 800-468-7483 | www.sungardas.com
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