Southcoast Health System employs approximately 7,000 workers, including 300 physicians and 250 visiting nurses, and it provides a wide range of medical services at each campus to streamline the patient care experience. Discover how they use Citrix to do just that.

1. Case study
citrix.com
Southcoast Health System
The organization employs approximately 7,000 workers,
including 300 physicians and 250 visiting nurses, and it
provides a wide range of medical services at each campus to
streamline the patient care experience

2. Case study
citrix.com
Southcoast Health System
2
“Anytime physicians or nurses
are faced with system
downtime, it impacts patient
care. With the Citrix platform,
we’re able to refresh, upgrade
and advance the environment
without ever impacting our
business, which operates 24/7,
365 days a year.”
Mark Lacombe
Director of Information
Technology
Southcoast Health System
Southcoast Health System is a not-for-profit healthcare provider
headquartered in New Bedford, Massachusetts. With three
hospitals, 27 physician offices, a cancer center, urgent care facilities,
labs and radiology centers, and a visiting nurses’ service, Southcoast
is a rapidly growing healthcare service provider in New England.
Southcoast’s mission is to provide “advanced care, close to home”
for the communities it serves.
The challenge: Delivering a consistent
patient experience and protecting
privacy in a growing, distributed and
mobile environment
Southcoast’s goal is to grow aggressively while
delivering an exceptional patient experience in
increasingly distributed settings, including
newly built outpatient centers and recently
acquired physician practices. To recruit and
retain top medical staff and provide excellent
care, the organization wanted to give physicians,
visiting nurses and staff seamless, uniform
access to patient health records as they move
among facilities, regardless of the device used.
Recognizing a growing risk of data breaches,
Southcoast also wanted to help ensure the
security of patient information. To address
these diverse clinical, business and security
goals while keeping operational overhead
costs low, Southcoast needed to invest in the
right IT infrastructure.
The solution: Implementing an integrated
EMR system and building the simple,
secure-by-design mobile workspace that
clinicians require
Reaching its goals began with a decision to
replace best-of-breed applications with a rich,
integrated electronic medical record (EMR)
solution from Epic. Now physicians and nurses
can seamlessly access and view the same
patient data as they move among facilities.
“Whether physicians log in from the office or
the hospital, they employ the same user ID to
access Epic,” says Mark Lacombe, director of
information technology at Southcoast.
“Practitioners see the same patient information,
whether a patient is in the hospital or has been
discharged to our visiting nurses service.”
Southcoast also decided to give clinicians
access from their device of choice. Yet with so
many personal mobile devices and the diverse
laptops and PCs owned by the health system,
Southcoast needed an integrated platform that
met both the ease-of-use requirements of
clinicians and the security mandates of the
business. “We have roughly 6,000 PCs and 800
laptops in the network,” says Lacombe.
“Pushing data out to mobile devices without
compromising security was a big concern.”
The organization turned to its longtime partner
Citrix for an integrated solution, choosing
XenApp and XenDesktop as the foundation to
deliver its integrated EMR system plus 50 other
clinical and nonclinical applications. The
environment runs on the Cisco Unified
Computing System platform and uses NetScaler
as a front end. The organization also uses
XenServer for all of the Citrix environments
except Epic. To support its expanded mobile

3. Case study
citrix.com
Southcoast Health System
3
device footprint, Southcoast chose XenMobile
as its enterprise mobility management solution.
“XenMobile handles mobile device management
as part of the application, and it also has the
flexibility to support our bring-your-own-device
policies,” he says. “We can lock devices, wipe
data, upgrade and manage devices, and be
proactive in case of a security incident—all while
creating an intuitive experience for users.”
Key benefits
Enabling rapid organizational growth and
keeping operational overhead at less than 2
percent of annual budget
Southcoast now has the infrastructure needed
to support future acquisitions and growth. The
organization can efficiently deploy applications,
update and patch software, and add users in
just a few clicks, without touching the devices.
Yet Southcoast requires only two Citrix
engineers, which helps keep operational
overhead at less than 2 percent of its annual
budget. Maintenance executes while the
system is running, nearly eliminating any
downtime potential. “Anytime physicians or
nurses are faced with system downtime, it
impacts patient care,” says Lacombe. “With the
Citrix platform, we’re able to refresh, upgrade
and advance the environment without ever
impacting our business, which operates 24/7,
365 days a year.”
Quadrupling system usage by taking a clinician-
centric approach to information technology
“One of the reasons we decided on Citrix as
our end-to-end platform is that it provides
clinicians with a seamless transition from
practice to hospital,” says Christian Boucher,
Southcoast’s manager of directory services for
desktop and mobile engineering. “Users want
a simple, uniform experience where they can
access patient information across home,
hospital and mobile devices. Our goal was to
make it as easy as possible without stifling
physicians’ workflow, while securing patient
information.” Southcoast views clinician and
staff adoption as its success metric. Within the
first two years after implementation, usage
quadrupled, and further growth is expected.
Proactively protecting sensitive
patient information
With the Citrix solutions, Southcoast keeps
patient data safe and ensures sensitive
information remains private. The new
infrastructure protects against data leakage
and controls the influx of new mobile devices,
even when clinicians bring their own devices.
“Physicians and executives want simplified
anytime, anywhere access into a secure
workspace,” says Boucher. “In our environment,
users simply load the client, log in, and they’re
presented with their applications, desktops and
tools. By protecting the data, the Citrix tools
help us be proactive about security, not reactive.
With all the breaches we read about in the
news, that’s essential.”
Looking ahead
With a rich IT foundation in place that enables
physicians, nurses and staff to be mobile and
securely access patient data anytime and
anywhere, Southcoast will continue to rely on
Citrix. “To support our growth strategy, we’re
always looking for new ways to expand our
mobile and remote access reach,” says Boucher.
“As we deploy the Citrix solutions, we’ll continue
to enhance the user experience for clinicians,
which will help us further improve patient care.
Achieving these goals is easier knowing that we
have Citrix as a trusted partner.”
Industry
• Healthcare
Key Benefits
• Enables rapid organizational
growth and keeps operational
overhead at less than 2 percent
of annual budget
• Quadruples system usage by
taking a clinician-centric
approach to IT
• Proactively protects sensitive
patient information
Citrix Products
• XenDesktop
• XenApp
• XenMobile
• XenServer
• NetScaler
“One of the reasons we decided on
Citrix as our end-to-end platform
is that it provides clinicians with a
seamless transition from practice
to hospital.”
Christian Boucher
Manager of Directory Services for
Desktop and Mobile Engineering
Southcoast Health System

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Case study
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Southcoast Health System