Mount Sinai slashes 10-year IT capital costs by moving to the cloud

By Liam On Nov 10, 2023

Healthcare is rapidly changing due to a highly competitive marketplace – not to mention changing consumer expectations, differing care models, and the need for platforms to meet different clinical and research needs.

THE PROBLEM

The Mount Sinai Health System needed to proactively prepare for and get ahead of these changes and future business and technology needs.

“We also operated 13 data centers/server rooms across the healthcare system, and significant investment and effort would have been required to resolve the data center issues,” said Kristin Myers, executive vice president and chief digital and information officer at Mount Sinai Health. System and Dean for Digital and Information Technology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The organization made the strategic decision to embark on its data center and cloud transformation journey to address these issues:

· Increased risk and impact on revenue, operations and patient care due to data center disruptions.

· Significant investment and effort in resolving data center issues.

· A fragmented technological infrastructure that will struggle to adequately support new business, digital growth and innovation.

PROPOSAL

Microsoft Azure cloud technology, Myers explained, provided a modern technology platform and services to solve the challenges Mount Sinai faced. It would alleviate the problems, Myers said, by helping the health care system:

Avoid tens of millions of dollars to complete facility remediation and hire additional data center staff.
Improve the ability to recover from disruptions by creating geographic diversity and failover capabilities in the cloud.
Reduce data center footprint by reclaiming space at multiple locations across the healthcare system.
Ensure a balanced and scalable technology infrastructure with increased security, lower hardware costs, improved uptime/recovery, and greater flexibility.
Support innovation efforts by enabling new business growth models and supporting research and AI initiatives.

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

“We worked with Microsoft to move to a hybrid cloud/colocation approach to significantly reduce our on-premise data centers and aggressively migrate remaining workloads to the cloud and colocation,” Myers explained. “We have assessed a current state of play and developed a comprehensive plan to move the majority of our applications to the cloud, including Epic.

“With this massive effort, we have also partnered with Accenture as our third-party vendor to deliver cloud managed services to support cloud migration and cloud operations,” she continued. “To ensure the success of this initiative, we have established a robust governance structure, both internally within Mount Sinai and externally at both Microsoft and Accenture.”

“To ensure the success of this initiative, we have established a robust governance structure, both internally within Mount Sinai and externally at both Microsoft and Accenture.”

Kristin Myers, Mount Sinai Healthcare System

This allowed Mount Sinai to collaborate, make data-driven decisions, address risks or issues quickly and ultimately stay on track for the cloud journey, she added.

RESULTS

Before embarking on its cloud journey, Mount Sinai developed a comprehensive plan and associated business case that outlined costs and ROI.

“In addition to avoiding major investments in facilities, data centers and disaster recovery, we also anticipated a significant reduction in the 10-year IT capital that would have been required,” Myers said. “We have had to invest capital over the first two years to implement this initiative, but we are on track for a positive payback period by the end of 2026.

“We will also look to reduce operating costs by a few million per year from 2024,” she said. “As part of the plan and business case, we also successfully migrated, consolidated and shut down the identified data centers and servers, achieving cost savings and also resolving the risks associated with the data centers.”

ADVICE FOR OTHERS

Rich Birhanzel is a senior managing director and global healthcare industry leader at Accenture, Mount Sinai’s partner company. He offers this advice to Myers’ colleagues embarking on similar cloud journeys.

“We have entered a new phase of healthcare, made possible by technology,” he said. “By moving electronic health records to the cloud, organizations can put secure, real-time insights into the hands of physicians and patients. At the same time, the power of the cloud enables organizations to optimize costs and reduce risks.

“Organizations like Mount Sinai that adopt EHR and cloud technology will be able to integrate, secure and innovate across platforms to reimagine healthcare access, experience and outcomes,” he added.

Accenture has seen significant interest in EHR cloud systems in the United States and Canada since early 2022, but few have completed migrations like Mount Sinai, Birhanzel noted.

“EHR cloud adoption requires leadership support with a cloud-first mindset, financial commitment and a realistic timeline that allows for the right pace of migration and factors in the impact on people and processes,” he said.

“For those considering moving EHR to the cloud, there are several things to consider,” he advised. “The journey starts with modernizing core technology. By leveraging advanced cloud technology, organizations can reduce costs and create space for growth and innovation.”

Security must be considered from the start, with a focus on reducing the risk of cyberattacks to keep patients safe, he said.

“With the right approach to cloud transformation,” he concluded, “organizations can lay the foundation for humanized healthcare in which people get truly personalized healthcare experiences.”

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