Cisco on Cisco

When Cisco began to lay the groundwork for its next-generation healthcare center in early 2008, the company’s leaders knew it was the right fit for Cisco; the center showcases the convergence of forward-looking technology and healthcare and improves quality and flexibility of care for employees.

“The idea behind the LifeConnections Health Center is to help Cisco employees engage in health management for themselves and their families,” says Sharon Gibson, healthcare practice director for the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG). “Unlike a traditional clinic where our employees might receive ‘reactive’ treatment for existing health issues, LifeConnections also focuses on prevention,” she says. The center gives Cisco employees and their families onsite access to a full range of medical care services that range from primary care and physical exams to immunizations, travel medicine, lab work, health coaching, and an onsite pharmacy operated by Walgreens. “We provide services such as primary care, acupuncture, chiropractic services, and physical therapy, all in one location,” says Gibson.

IT-Enabled Healthcare

Unique to Cisco in the new healthcare model is the IT infrastructure that ties all the services together. “Cisco employees and their dependents are quite receptive to the use of technology for everything in their lives,” says Gibson. But until recently, healthcare was among the few aspects of employee life that was not technology enabled. In fact, Gibson observes, such was the case for healthcare in general, and Cisco saw the gap as an ideal invitation and opportunity for Cisco IT.

“Very little of the healthcare delivery model used technology,” says Gibson. “This was an incredible opportunity for Cisco not only to deliver some state-of-the-art, high-quality services, but also to technology-enable those services.” Some examples of how the network facilitates healthcare processes within the Cisco LifeConnections model include automation of some administrative services to simplify the care process, and support for quality-of-care improvements such as longitudinal electronic records (electronic records of patient health encounters over a period of time) and online prescribing.

Return on Investment

With the LifeConnections Health Center, technology will enable Cisco to save money on employee healthcare, even while improving the quality of service and experience for employees and their dependents. “We believe that the health center will pay for itself in approximately two years, through reductions in hospitalizations and emergency room visits and productivity improvements as a result of increased employee engagement and awareness of health status,” says Gibson. Cisco is self-insured and has a low employee turnover rate, two factors that affected the need for the program and will factor in return on investment (ROI) for the health center. Preventing illness and reducing employees’ time away from work for off-campus medical visits will speed ROI through productivity gains.

Cost savings come from other areas as well, including the use of technology to streamline processes and reduce the inconveniences often associated with healthcare. Employees and family members can now perform many healthcare-related activities online, such as scheduling appointments, receiving test results and other medical information, communicating with coaches or clinicians through secure messaging, and renewing prescriptions. When visiting the Cisco center in person, they can use automatic check-through to speed check-in and check-out processes. With open sharing of electronic medical records (EMRs) during office visits, patients can collaborate with their clinicians and track conditions and progress over time. “Cisco created the LifeConnections care model so that the time spent in the center is about health, rather than the administrative processes so often described as obstacles by our employees,” Gibson says.   

Complying with Healthcare Standards

Cisco set out on an ambitious mission to bring the LifeConnections Health Center to life in an 18-month timeframe, building the center from the ground up. Adding to the multitude of challenges in this schedule were the complex demands imposed upon Cisco IT staff to create the architecture, design, and operational support plan that would comply with security, privacy, and modern healthcare standards, notably the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). For instance, compliance with HIPAA requires that electronic personal health records and medical records of employees and their dependents are maintained for confidentiality, integrity, and privacy. It was also imperative that no Cisco employee can access any medical records, a requirement that was particularly challenging given that Cisco IT staff needed to partially support the LifeConnections Health Center infrastructure.

Along with planning for that level of compliance, Cisco IT needed to determine how the new healthcare networks implemented for LifeConnections would coexist with the corporate infrastructure. Sandeep Kumar, the Cisco IT solution architect tasked with designing the LifeConnections overall solution architecture, recalls, “We had to create a scalable architecture where the network design and support processes coexist with the corporate IT infrastructure such that the scope of HIPAA compliance audit is limited to LifeConnections Health Center.”

Careful network design was the answer. According to Laura Coon, Cisco IT senior manager, “One of the ways that we addressed HIPAA was to completely separate the medical records from the IP-based phone system. The entire Cisco infrastructure design is for sharing and web control of the phones, so that restriction was a challenge.”

Collaboration and Mobility

As in other businesses, mobility is advantageous for healthcare professionals. Cisco IT addressed this need with extensive use of unified communications throughout the center. New Cisco 7925 wireless or mobile IP phones are critical to support mobility for LifeConnections medical staff. The IP phones provide the most current Cisco mobility features, including Single-Number Reach. They feature a hermetically sealed, “hardened” design for use in healthcare environments to ensure that they can be disinfected and remain fully operational. Equipped with wireless IP phones, medical staff can move around the entire Cisco campus and be reached at any time.

Cisco TelePresence™ also provides an important function in the LifeConnections facility, extending the coaching services’ reach to locations across the United States. Cisco employees who are not based in San Jose can use a TelePresence session to connect with coaches located at the health center. Likewise, LifeConnections staff can use TelePresence to confer with their remotely located colleagues to improve the quality of care for Cisco employees.

In keeping with the Cisco on Cisco vision, Cisco LifeConnections Health Center will serve as a showcase and briefing center for customers who are interested in or planning to implement IT-enabled corporate health centers. One technology currently on display in the center is a prototype of Cisco HealthPresence, a new concept also developed by Cisco IBSG. Combining state-of-the-art video, audio, and medical information, Cisco HealthPresence creates a live, “face-to-face visit” experience over the network for clinicians and patients, even though they might be hundreds of miles apart. The visit is enhanced by the availability of physical and diagnostic information (such as vital signs) generated from a variety of medical devices integrated with Cisco HealthPresence. This collaborative solution can be located in a variety of places, including office buildings, shopping malls, community centers, hotels, or schools, thus offering convenient and timely access to healthcare services.

Cisco IT is working on plans to introduce further technology innovations in coming phases of the health center’s development. Some examples include a capability to indicate room readiness through use of the Cisco IP phones, integration with new providers and services, and enhanced online health management tools.

For More Information

Presentation: “Employers Driving Healthcare: Potential Threat or Business Opportunity?”
Cisco HealthPresence
Tour of Cisco’s new onsite LifeConnections Health Center
Video: Cisco HealthPresence Pilot at Scottish Centre for TeleHealth