Case Studies

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital – Columbia University Medical Center
New York, New York

Situation
The Columbia University Medical Center is one of five centers that make up NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Situated on a 20-acre campus in the Washington Heights community of northern Manhattan and comprising roughly half of Columbia University's nearly $2 billion annual budget, Columbia University's Medical Center provides world-class leadership in scientific research, health and medical education, and patient care.

The Columbia University Medical Center realized that their existing computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software was not meeting their needs and were looking for software that would provide more flexibility; that could be configured to match their existing workflow processes. They chose Gannett Fleming, Inc.’s Saber™ system to meet these requirements.

Challenges
The Columbia University Medical Center is a Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) accredited facility that can be inspected at any time. It was crucial that the data be migrated seamlessly over to Saber to maintain full equipment and facility history. The Columbia University Medical Center maintains more than 10,000 pieces of equipment and had more than 281,000 work orders that needed to be converted from their old CMMS to Saber.

Solutions
Gannett Fleming converted the data onsite to ensure that the transition between differing CMMS packages was flawless. It was also imperative that there were no gaps in the work order history, which had been in place since 1999. To accomplish this, the programmers at Gannett Fleming were able to completely transfer the existing data from the previous CMMS system, including work order history, employee hour history, equipment history, as well as the equipment inventory, and preventive maintenance procedure library.

Saber was installed and the old CMMS data converted in just three hours. Training was given to key personnel at the Columbia University Medical Center to familiarize them with Saber and to ensure that they were completely comfortable performing their normal daily tasks. Personnel were creating and entering work orders within five hours of installation and conversion. This meant that there was very little backlog of work due to the conversion. The work history was maintained and no data was lost at any point during the migration from their previous CMMS.

Saber was implemented successfully; the Columbia University Medical Center had little downtime during the transition and were able to maintain their tracking of approximately 77 daily work orders and 225 weekly preventive maintenance work orders without incident. The work history from 1999 (more than 281,000 work orders) is now maintained within Saber. The Columbia University Medical Center now has Saber’s powerful reporting capability that they can use to help them maintain their JCAHO compliance, as well as the flexibility to run their facility whatever way that they choose.

Saber currently tracks 100 percent of preventive maintenance activities and compliance is monitored monthly to ensure maintenance personnel continuously document their time. This data is used by the management staff to not only maintain JCAHO compliance, but also to justify the existing staffing profile and the hiring of additional staff.