Indiana University Health Implements ITIL as part of its Journey to Service Excellence

A private, non-profit organization, Indiana University Health owns or manages more than 18 hospitals and health centers throughout Indiana and is closely tied to the Indiana University School of Medicine, the nation’s second largest medical school. More than half of the IU School of Medicine's 970 physicians practice, supervise, and teach residents and fellows at one of IU Health's hospitals. IU Health’s gross patient revenue is over $7 billion. It has over 115,000 admissions and close to two million outpatient visits each year and employs more than 22,000 staff. IU Health is designated as a Magnet hospital system by the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

THE CHALLENGE

IU Health’s vision is to be a preeminent leader in clinical care, education, research, and service, and the organization has a continual focus on innovation and excellence. Working toward this vision and as part of their IT roadmap, the IT leadership team developed an initiative, the “IS Journey to Service Excellence” to work toward IT excellence by focusing on an effective balance of people, process, and technology. Their strategy was to develop a strong IT service management program using the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) methodology. ITIL advocates that IT services must be aligned to the needs of the business and underpin the core business processes. It provides guidance on structured IT processes that ensure consistent system availability and reduce the cost of providing IT services.

THE SOLUTION

Aspen was engaged to implement an ITIL process improvement program. Aspen worked with IU Health’s IT leadership team to assess organizational readiness for the ITIL program, define quality targets, develop a plan, educate and certify the IT leadership team, and drive the implementation of Incident Management / Service Desk, Problem Management, and Change Management processes. Specific outcomes included:

Formalizing performance management-based objectives;

Facilitating a three-day ITIL foundations training course that combined lecture, individual and group assignments, and several mock examinations;

Documenting ITIL process descriptions as well as establishing and implementing ITSM processes;

Defining IT services and the full service catalog – the basis for categorization and prioritization of incidents, problems, and changes;

Establishing an IT service continuity strategy;

Defining service objectives and key performance indicators; and

Enhancing IT infrastructure performance by integrating IU Health’s infrastructure and tools with the individual ITIL process designs.

THE RESULTS

As a result of the engagement, Indiana University Health has a strong IS operations environment and IT service management program based on the ITIL methodology. The organization has significantly improved service levels and saved several million dollars annually through virtualizing its server environment, implementing a new back-up and recovery infrastructure, migrating to a VOIP telephony environment, standardizing its change management process across the organization, and restructuring its service desk. IU Health continues to advance best practices in developing new ideas and practical techniques in its IS Journey to Service Excellence.