Arcadia Retirement Residence
Improved patient care through effective collaboration
Summary Data
Arcadia has been Hawaii's premier retirement residence since 1967.
Industry
Eldercare
Geography
Hawaii, USA
Consulting
SharePoint Consulting
Training Services
technologies
SharePoint
Windows Server Hyper-V
Challenges/Goals
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7 geographic locations
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Need to organize information per locations and functional area
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Need to surface resident data securely
Solution/Approach
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Complete discovery to understand unique requirements
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Develop dynamic Employee Portal taxonomy to manage information
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Use BCS to surface only non-sensitive resident profile information
Results
Improved collaboration among staff
Ability to locate and view information in meaningful ways
Improved quality of life for residents who are better informed
Overview
Arcadia has been Hawaii’s premier retirement residence and one of the finest in the nation since 1967. Residents enjoy panoramic mountain, ocean and Diamond Head views, plus unparalleled access to all of Honolulu's social, cultural, educational and entertainment facilities. Arcadia offers a gracious, compassionate and dynamic environment, with a continuum of assured lifetime care with a staff that works diligently to satisfy the physical, social and spiritual needs of every resident.
Challenges/
Goals
Arcadia Retirement Residence, a local, not-for-profit holding company, is comprised of seven not-for-profit operating companies, each operating from its own location on the island of Oahu.
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With nearly 400 employees spread across seven locations, most of whom require access to similar information, a central repository to store and organize information related to client-care was critical. Furthermore, occupants of ACS’s two residential facilities desired a way to find other residents with similar likes and interests.
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Arcadia invited Synergy to assist them in improving collaboration among staff, as well as to help provide an interactive means to communicate effectively with and among residents.
Solution/
Approach
Synergy professionals spent time in a Discovery process in order to understand the unique requirements of both the ACS staff and the residents who have made Arcadia their home. This process uncovered the need for a secure intranet portal where employees could share information and collaborate in a dynamic environment. The Discovery also identified the need for a client-facing portal that residents could utilize to learn about current activities and to locate fellow residents.
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Synergy’s solution was to build out a SharePoint environment using Hyper-V servers. Within the SharePoint environment, multiple web applications were created to accommodate Central Administration, My Sites, an Employee Portal and a Resident Portal. Once the SharePoint environment was in place, the next step was to build out the Employee Portal so that staff could begin collaborating more effectively. A portal taxonomy was put into place that accounted for the multiple locations as well as the functional units (such as meal service and sanitation) that spanned those locations. In this way, employees could locate the information most relevant to them.
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After the Employee Portal was well in hand, attention turned to the Resident Portal. Out of the box Announcements lists and the Publishing feature were leveraged to provide information of interest to residents. Importantly, one of the key requests was a means for residents to locate one another without the need for ACS staff to maintain multiple contact lists. Details for each occupant living in ACS facilities were already being maintained in an electronic medical records system.
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Synergy developers leveraged SharePoint’s Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to tap into this existing data source and bring only the appropriate information into Active Directory. With Active Directory populated via BCS, residents could utilize the out of the box People Search to locate their fellow occupants. Synergy went one step further and created a custom Search Page to make searching as simple as possible for the elderly population.
Results
With the SharePoint portal in place, ACS staff now work in a collaborative environment which means less time is spent duplicating information. Additionally, they can more easily find the information that matters to them. These improvements have resulted in significant time savings on a day-to-day basis.
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Residents now have easy access to current information regarding social events and other items of interest happening at the Residence. They also have a means to locate fellow-residents through a simple search interface that allows them to search on a variety of familiar parameters such as name, facility or apartment number.
