Background
Beth Israel Lahey Health was formed in March 2019 through the merger of Lahey Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, serving Boston and the greater Boston area. The BID Community Hospitals, composed of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospitals in Milton, Needham, and Plymouth, are longtime MEDITECH customers. The community hospitals upgraded to MEDITECH Expanse in late 2018 and implemented MEDITECH's Ambulatory product in fall 2020.
The relationship with Acmeware dates back to 2013 when Milton Hospital first engaged Acmeware through the Partnership Program. In 2014, the engagement expanded to include OneView for quality reporting. Over the years, Acmeware became a trusted extension of BID's IT operations, providing the specialized Data Repository and SQL Server expertise that the hospitals relied on to supplement their internal team.
"We are thrilled with our partnership with Acmeware. Data and analytics are key to our business and our ability to provide top quality healthcare to our communities. So many people rely on timely and accurate data, it is a foundational part of our Information Technology infrastructure. Acmeware helps us both proactively and reactively to keep our tremendous data environments running smoothly. They are an integral part of our team!" - Jeannette Currie, CIO, BID Community Hospitals
The Challenge
After completing the conversion to Expanse, BID began experiencing disk space problems on their Data Repository server. This is not uncommon. Initial reporting environment setup performed by third-party vendors during an EHR migration frequently results in suboptimal configuration, and the issues may not surface until the system has been running in production for some time. Left unaddressed, these problems can escalate from degraded performance to potential operational impact across reporting services and critical data workflows.
BID elected to leverage their existing Acmeware Partnership Program to address the issue, entrusting Acmeware's DBA team to investigate the health of their MEDITECH Data Repository and reporting services infrastructure.
The Solution
Acmeware's investigation revealed that the disk capacity issues stemmed from improper setup of the DR server during the initial Expanse implementation. The configuration required correction to avoid potential negative operational impact across the hospital system.
Acmeware informed BID of the root cause, outlined the potential long-term consequences if the issue went unresolved, and provided specific corrective action recommendations. From there, the two teams developed a collaborative remediation plan that included changing properties of drives, reorganizing file types in accordance with MEDITECH best practices, and carefully planning for associated downtime windows to minimize disruption.
Results and Benefits
Optimized Reporting Infrastructure
The space remediation plan was successfully implemented through a joint effort between BID and Acmeware staff, resulting in the full optimization of the reporting services and servers. The hospitals regained healthy disk capacity, proper file organization, and a Data Repository environment aligned with MEDITECH's recommended configuration standards.
Ongoing Monitoring and Proactive Maintenance
Beyond the initial remediation, Acmeware continues to monitor and safeguard BID's Data Repository and reporting environment as part of their ongoing DBA services engagement. This proactive approach means that configuration drift, capacity issues, and performance degradation are identified and addressed before they become critical problems, rather than after.
A Collaborative Partnership Model
BID Community Hospitals have a strong internal IT staff. The value of the Acmeware partnership is not about replacing that team, but about supplementing their capabilities and bandwidth with specialized Data Repository and SQL Server expertise. The depth of Acmeware's database and server administration experience gives BID access to a level of MEDITECH-specific knowledge that would be difficult and expensive to develop and maintain in-house.
The relationship, now spanning over a decade, has evolved from initial Partnership Program support and quality reporting into a comprehensive engagement that covers DBA services, Data Repository health monitoring, and ongoing operational support across all three hospital campuses.
