Network Hardware Resale has helped Sansum Clinic transfer all of its data to an electronic health record system that has increased efficiency and decreased costs, according to Mike Lodato, NHR’s senior vice president for sales and marketing.

Health-care providers throughout the nation are tasked with going digital with their data by 2015. Providers would face financial penalties if they don’t reach the government-mandated deadline, and Lodato said NHR provides reliable equipment and a secure platform.

“When implementing a network like this, it must stay up, and the best way to ensure that is to build redundancy into the architecture,” he said. “Sansum first went into traditional channels to buy their equipment, but it was so expensive that they couldn’t afford to build redundancy into the network.”

All of the information that used to be written down on paper now will be recorded and stored electronically. Wave, Sansum’s electronic record system, creates a continuously updated chart for each patient that doctors can access anywhere, at anytime.

“From a patient’s perspective, it ensures every medical professional is looking at the same data in real time,” Lodato said.

Network Hardware Resale has been teaming up with health-care providers since they began the transition to electronic records several years ago. Now, one of the fastest-growing companies in Santa Barbara has more than 200 health-care customers, including seven of the 10 largest hospital’s in the nation, according to Lodato.

“A lot of it has to do with electronic records and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act,” he said. “They are doing it to reduce costs and streamline the process, and it created a huge demand for us in health-care information management.”

Since 2009, Sansum has purchased hundreds of pre-owned Cisco devices from NHR and saved about $1.1 million in hardware costs compared with the list price, according to a company news release.

“Factors in our decision included (NHR’s) ability to provide us with hardware at incredible speeds, the rigorous testing their equipment goes through and their knowledgeable team of engineers,” Donovan Wade, Sansum’s technical services manager, said in the release.

The company also will save about $57,000 in maintenance fees, according to the news release. The solid-state hardware and the NetSure network will maximize efficiency, extend equipment life and reduce cost without increasing risk, the company said.

“The cost savings realized by Sansum Clinic from using pre-owned networking equipment allowed it to focus on and prioritize other IT initiatives as well as speed up its EHR migration,” NHR President and CEO Mike Sheldon said.

In terms of privacy protection, Lodato said, the network has multiple levels of security and is HIPAA compliant.

“We are using our Wave platform as well as new virtualization technology to leverage the interchange and interplay of patient information,” Wade said. “We can easily and securely share information with other providers, such as hospitals and labs, to improve the overall patient care experience.”

Lodato said that many hospitals have been under cost control and have gotten by with old systems, but once the government realized the glaring inefficiencies, it opened the doors for companies such as Network Hardware Resale.

“The convergence of health care and IT will be a huge market for the next decade at least,” he said.

— Noozhawk business writer Alex Kacik can be reached at akacik@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.