IT Solutions for Healthcare

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Healthcare professionals, throughout the United States, have been learning to manage HIPAA compliance to adhere to industry requirements. One component that the healthcare industry must comply with is the Security Risk Assessment (or SRA), which must be completed annually. The Security Risk Assessment includes, not only your processes and procedures, for managing protected health information, it also includes a thorough review of your IT Infrastructure, including areas such as:

  • Access Controls
  • Business Continuity Procedures
  • Perimeter Security
  • Storage
  • Secure data transmission
  • Patch Management

All of these issues are critical to the security and privacy of your patients’ information, and performing a security risk assessment can be time-consuming and difficult. WheelHouse Solutions’ HIPAA risk assessment team has worked hard to make these assessments as quick and painless as possible so that you can focus on your patients.

What you get

Our risk assessment provides you with a full, audit-ready report, that explains to you where you are at-risk and what changes you can make to reduce the risks. We will run an analysis of your IT environment, including scans that will help you identify where you have protected health information. When we leave, you can feel confident that you have a plan that will keep you in compliance.

Security Risk Assessment FAQs

Who is required to complete an annual SRA?

Any organization that maintains, tracks or, otherwise, has access to protected health data is required to complete an annual SRA, particularly medical professionals, such as chiropractors, dentists, general practitioners and other medical specialists.

Is Security Risk Analysis optional for small providers?

In a word – No. All providers who are “covered entities”, under HIPAA, are required to perform a risk analysis. Additionally, any providers who receive EHR incentive payments are required to perform an SRA, as well.

Is it true that EHR vendors are not responsible for compliance?

While an EHR vendor may be able to provide information, or training, on privacy and security aspects, relating to their product, they are not actually responsible for making their products compliant with HIPAA’s Privacy and Security Rules. It is, solely, the responsibility of the “covered entity” to complete an SRA.

Healthcare is evolving, and you need the technology team to help your organization evolve with it. At WheelHouse Solutions, we’ll assist you at every stage – from HIPAA-compliant infrastructure, including mobile solutions, to real-time access to patient information. Our healthcare IT Solutions, Cloud Services and Managed Services ensure compliance and flexibility, throughout your organization.  Fill out the form on this page or call us at 314-492-2506 for a free consultation.

What is Puppet Software Consulting?

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Wheelhouse Solutions provides Puppet® Consulting allowing us to work with our clients to apply advanced development methodologies, in order to deploy IT infrastructure, through the feature-rich and intuitive Puppet® software interface.

Our Puppet® Consulting & Installation Services Include:

  • Consulting and technical resources to assist you in rapidly deploying and implementing Puppet Enterprise into your IT environment
  • Designing Puppet Enterprise® so that it’s configured to meet your company’s IT management and automation goals
  • Providing Technical training to your IT staff, to ensure they are equipped to utilize Puppet® to automate IT infrastructure
  • Subcontracting our consultancy services so that Puppet® Consulting can be added to your services offering

Easily Model & Manage Your IT Environment

Puppet Enterprise® allows you to manage your entire IT infrastructure, in code format, without hiring additional staff. Puppet® allows you to use the same tools that developers use, such as version control, automated testing, code review and continuous integration and automated deployment. Having the ability to see your infrastructure as “code” makes it easier for devOps and QA teams to collaborate, across your organization. Simply put, Puppet Enterprise® allows your IT staff to maximize the speed of deployments and improve software quality.

Intuitive Visual Workflows

Puppet® allows your IT staff to deploy phased infrastructure and application bundles using comprehensive visual workflows. Puppet® automatically assigns the correct order of operations, what data needs to be securely exchanged between services, and when to wait for a service to become available before continuing the deployment.

With intuitive graphical reporting, your IT staff can easily determine how your infrastructure and applications are configured, as well as the relationships and dependencies with other software applications. Your staff can quickly discern what changed, in real time, which employee made the change and what caused the issue, including whether it was accidental or intentional. Puppet® allows you to troubleshoot your IT environment much more quickly, minimizing issues and reducing mean time to recover.

Automate Your IT Environment with Puppet

If your network device has an IP address, it can be quickly and easily automated using Puppet Enterprise®. Puppet Enterprise® provides your IT environment with a common language so that, no matter what software you’re running, and where it runs, Puppet® can deliver and operate all of your devices and applications.

Puppet Enterprise® Capabilities

  • Automated provisioning – Automate provisioning across your heterogeneous infrastructure
  • Orchestration – Orchestrate change with control, visibility, and automated intelligence
  • Configuration automation – Define and continually enforce infrastructure configurations
  • Situational awareness – Gain insight into your infrastructure, audit changes and get rich reporting
  • Code management – Manage infrastructure code across environments
  • Node management – Save yourself the manual work of classifying and managing nodes
  • Role-based access control – Assign permissions to teams in line with company and regulatory policies
  • Discovery & insights – Quickly discover resources that need automated management

Puppet® software allows system administrators the operational efficiency, insights, and agility they need to proactively manage today’s dynamic IT infrastructure, scaling from tens of servers to hundreds, both in the cloud and on-premise. Thousands of the world’s largest organizations utilize Puppet® software to manage and configure their IT environment.

In addition to Puppet® Consulting, WheelHouse Solutions also provides Puppet® installation, Puppet® configuration, Puppet® support, Puppet® troubleshooting services, Puppet® emergency help and Puppet® remote support. We invite you to fill out the form on this page or call us at 314-492-2506 to find out more about our Puppet® consulting services and one of our representatives will get back with you, quickly.

Assigning Priorities to Your Upcoming IT Upgrades

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No matter how much a company spends on technology and equipment, those solutions are not meant to last forever and have an anticipated lifecycle. Even after significant investments in technology in your organization, you may have noticed that those solutions are no longer as effective as they once were. Competitors are leveraging new technologies to better serve their clients and you’re getting left in the dust. Sounds like it might be time to implement some upgrades.

As a result, it’s critically important that you plan your IT modernization activities using at least one of these principles.

Simplify & Streamline the Design

In many cases, older IT solutions are a mixed menagerie of various technologies, frequently designed with a very simple modular focus – one or two processes can be accommodated, but only as long as the focus of the business does not shift.

Modern IT solutions are systems that are primarily engineered on standardized components and languages, so that they can be easily leveraged to use application programming interfaces (or APIs) in order to facilitate multiple processes running at the same time. In addition, modern IT networks and solutions can be used to implement advanced processes, like artificial intelligence and machine learning. These capabilities allow employees to service customers more easily, improving customer satisfaction and enhancing employee skills, by exposing them to advanced IT technologies.

Prioritize Employee Benefits and Added Value

One of the most significant benefits of any modernized IT network is the improved value that network users will experience due to upgrades and investments being made. With the latest in network solutions, your business can now deliver a level of customer service by leveraging the solutions that are available to you through a modernized network solution.

Automation is a large part of this because if you aren’t reducing the number of tasks that your employees need to complete in order to grow your company, you may find it difficult to improve their productivity. For this reason, it’s important that your IT products and solutions provide value to your employees that also translates into operational benefits for the business.

Adhere to Company Culture

When developing the IT technology upgrade policy that will best grow your company, it can be helpful to understand how that technology will fit into your organization’s culture. At the same time, you must also ensure that your staff is prepared to implement the changes you’re making across the IT environment. One part of the upgrade should stipulate that you communicate the changes up front, along with your expectations that they will be implemented.

It will also help to rely upon those employees who are most receptive to the changes, who will fully utilize the upgrades and can be considered a source of valuable information should others in the business require assistance. Are there any problems or issues of which management is unaware? Utilizing these receptive employees to understand the culture within your business will help to inform future decisions on technology enhancements and upgrades.

If you’d like more information on planning and upgrading your IT network, we invite you to fill out the form on this page and someone will get back in touch with you soon.

Five Benefits of Managed Cloud Services

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Managed Cloud Services are helping companies optimize and streamline the management of their mission-critical applications and data. With managed cloud services, businesses can outsource scheduled maintenance, patches, software updates and management of their IT infrastructure, enabling their IT staff to focus on other business-critical objectives.

WheelHouse Solutions provides fully managed IT infrastructure and applications, in cloud-enabled environments. By utilizing our managed cloud services, businesses can enjoy the best of class service, rapidly provisioned hardware, middleware and outstanding support to meet their IT demands.

As one of St. Louis, Missouri’s premier providers of managed cloud services, WheelHouse Solutions also offers cloud hosting services, as well as a team of cloud service specialists to help our customers effectively manage their IT infrastructure.

Managed Cloud Services Options from WheelHouse Solutions

  • Colocation Services that provide reliable, enterprise-class hosting for businesses, ensuring dependable environments to protect and ensure the continuity of business-critical applications, network services, and digital assets.
  • Managed Application & Middleware Server services that offer implementation, configuration, monitoring, maintenance, upgrades and patches for application/middleware servers hosted at WheelHouse data centers.
  • Managed Database Services that include implementation, administration, support, maintenance and data optimization, as well as reliable disaster recovery services.
  • Managed Network Services, including data protection and disaster recovery solutions that minimize downtime, allowing your IT staff to focus on mission-critical needs.
  • Managed Security Services that provides network intrusion prevention and detection, real-time log flow analysis, vulnerability assessments and 24/7/365 monitoring and management.
  • Managed Server Services that provides a scalable and reliable physical server, as well as VM management services that ensure your servers are running at peak performance.
  • Managed Storage Services include reliable and resilience storage capabilities to protect and recover your data more quickly.
  • Managed Web Server Services that include implementation, configuration, maintenance, monitoring upgrades and patches of Web servers hosted within WheelHouse data centers.

Benefits of WheelHouse Solutions Managed Cloud Services

  • Your employees can work more efficiently, focusing solely on your business objectives, rather than on IT related tasks
  • Your company can scale its IT infrastructure, quickly and easily, to meet your current demand, while ensuring that your applications perform reliably in the cloud
  • Managed Cloud Services can lower your IT costs, by reducing or eliminating out-of-pocket expenses, in addition to reducing the cost of heating, cooling, and real estate
  • With Managed Cloud Services your business retains control over your resources, hardware, and bandwidth while outsourcing the problem-solving to the cloud services experts at WheelHouse solutions
  • Your organization can utilize the cloud to ensure security, compliance and operational standards of excellence, within your industry.

WheelHouse Solutions can provide Managed Cloud Services for your business.  We invite you to click here or call 314-492-2506 to request additional information about our Managed Cloud Services. We’ll work with you to develop a solution that will meet your needs now, as well as provide for future growth and flexibility.

Are Managed Help Desk Services Right For Your Business?

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St. Louis Help Desk ServicessWheelHouse Solutions’ help desk solutions allow your business to provide 24/7/365 help desk services while leaving the help desk management to us, so as not to take up the valuable time of your IT staff. WheelHouse Solutions offers both shared and dedicated help desk options, for our clients, and our partners’ clients.

Shared Help Desk Solutions

Our shared help desk solutions allow multiple clients to share the same resources. WheelHouse Solutions’ help desk agents have access to multiple ticketing systems and can follow procedures that are defined by each customer. Our professional help desk agents handle calls from many different customers, and always provide a friendly help desk support experience for all of our users, at all times.

Dedicated Help Desk Solutions

Our dedicated help desk solutions allow our clients to have a specific staff of agents, who handle their help desk calls and can range from simple call logging to full management of issues, including interacting with third-party vendors, on their behalf.

Benefits of Help Desk Outsourcing

  • Single Point of Contact for All Calls
  • Improved Levels of Customer Service
  • Frees Up Internal IT Resources for Other Projects
  • Significant Cost Reduction, vs in-house Help Desk
  • Expanded Hours of Help Desk Operation
  • Experienced and Professional Help Desk Employees
  • Fully-Documented Procedures with Custom-tailored Escalation Process
  • Accurate and Timely Reporting

Why Outsource Your Help Desk to WheelHouse Solutions?

Outsourcing your help desk is a great way to employ additional resources at a low cost and low risk to your business. When you outsource your help desk to WheelHouse Solutions, you are not constrained by employee limitations. Help desk outsourcing is a low-cost, low-risk way to employ additional human resources to your business, without the cost of hiring additional employees.

Help Desk Support That’s Tailored to Your Business

Our help desk outsourcing solutions allow your company to deploy an experienced support team, without hiring additional employees, saving you time and money. We’ll create work tickets, coordinate with the appropriate personnel, within your company, open trouble tickets with third-party vendors, where applicable, and resolve the trouble tickets, as quickly as possible. You can rest assured that our experienced agents will handle every call promptly and with the utmost in professionalism.

Each of our plans is flexible, allowing our clients to configure the best solution to meet their business needs. Because you are only paying for the time that our agents spend providing customer support, you can avoid the high cost of increasing your staff or paying overtime. You can outsource all of your help desk support to WheelHouse Solutions or we can augment your current staff – we can tailor a solution to meet the specific needs of your business.

Benefits of Our Help Desk Monitoring & Ticketing

There are many reasons to outsource your help desk services to WheelHouse Solutions. Below are just a few:

  • Based in the United States
    We never outsource calls overseas. You can rest assured that your help desk issues will be handled by a professional agent, who is highly trained and based in North America.
  • 24 Hour Support
    Our doors are always open. We provide help desk support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, allowing our customers to have peace of mind.
  • Friendly Service
    All of our help desk agents receive thorough training so that users have a pleasant, professional help desk experience.
  • Competitive Pricing
    WheelHouse Solutions offers flexible pricing options, on help desk outsourcing, allowing our clients to configure the solution that works best for their business.
  • Tracking and Notifications
    WheelHouse Solutions utilizes intuitive, integrated software, allowing us to communicate with our users via text message, email, telephone or even fax, regarding the status of their ticket.
  • Flexible & Efficient Automation
    WheelHouse Solutions utilizes advanced technology to effortlessly route your call to the appropriate live agent, for resolution.

WheelHouse Solutions provides Managed Help Desk Services for all types of businesses. We invite you to call us at 314-492-2506 or fill out the form on this page and we’ll work with you to develop a solution that will meet your needs now, as well as provide for future growth and flexibility.

5 Tips For Reducing Expenses In Your Organization

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Technology has become an essential factor in almost every business operation and now business owners are looking for ways to reduce expenses in their IT departments, in order to achieve greater efficiency for less money.

To do that, as a business owner, the logical action would be to cut back on your IT costs, but it’s essential to avoid sacrificing efficiency when reducing expenses.  With that in mine, here are the top five tips and tricks to reduce expenses in your business without compromising its efficiency and/or destroying value:

  1.  If you’re a small business owner, try to find alternatives to your traditional telephone service; if you’re using a land-line or a regular cell phone, you can switch to VoIP service and virtual phone lines. There are many options available that provide provide great flexibility and excellent value for the money, not to mention a serious cost reduction when it comes to communications.
  2. Use open source software. This is an excellent alternative to the commercial mainstream applications, especially if you’re a small business. The software related costs may cripple your business, especially in its inception phase, and open source software is very attractive, because it’s free.
  3. Use cloud services, instead of investing lots of money in hardware/software, especially if you’re a small business. Also, you should determine what you really need, the latest high-tech services is not always necessary and it may cost you an arm and a leg. And if you decide to perform an audit of your existing computers, you may find an answer about what’s really necessary for your line of business, hence reducing your technology expenses.
  4. You can try to negotiate with your existing IT contracts because IT services vendors desire to keep their clients happy and on board for as long as possible. Keep in mind that the competition in this area is pretty tight and you can take advantage on that. You can proactively ask for discounts, freebies, cost reductions or even negotiate a customized plan. In the end, it’s important to ask if you want to get any advantages.
  5. Reduce expenses with online business training. Being a small business owner, you can’t afford to travel the world in order to expand your experience, to participate in live training /educational conferences and the like. But, in the Internet era, you can use online business training for you and your employees. There are lots of free online business training programs and you can use them from the comfort of your office or even at home. With these options available for ongoing training, the possibilities for you and your business are endless, and your costs related to training will be significantly reduced.

If your business is looking for Managed IT, Cloud Services, Consulting & Support Services, WheelHouse Solutions has a staff of experienced professionals to deliver outstanding results. We provide cost-efficient managed IT Services, backed by a professional IT Staff, with experience in multiple disciplines. Whether you’re looking to augment your existing IT staff, or if your business wants to outsource all your IT services, we have a flexible solution to meet your needs.  Feel free to contact us at 314-492-2506 or fill out the form on this page and someone will get back with you.