Piedmont Healthcare stands tall as one of Georgia's premier private healthcare service providers. Beyond its network of 22 hospitals, the company operates 55 urgent care centers and collaborates closely with nearly 2,000 physician practices. With a dedicated workforce of over 30,000, Piedmont Healthcare serves around 3.4 million patients, showcasing its significant footprint in the healthcare landscape.

Email as a Central Pillar of Communication

For the team at Piedmont Healthcare, email is a crucial pillar of both internal and external communication. However, Jason Schlager, the Senior Client Server Engineer at Piedmont Healthcare, faces challenges that go well beyond just keeping email up and running for everyone. Often, access to information from older email messages is critical, especially for the legal department. This is an extremely sensitive area for a healthcare company, particularly when gearing up for legal battles. While Piedmont had already been using a system to store and archive email communications, according to Schlager, it fell short in several key areas.

"The issue with our old archive system was primarily a matter of time. Despite having around 15,000 users even back then, we could only process one archive search at a time. Given the system's sluggishness, some searches could drag on for hours. This situation was further compounded by our rapid expansion through acquiring more hospitals. Our user base ballooned to almost 40,000, creating an infrastructure that was completely overwhelmed over the years, lacking enough storage space for mailboxes. From a performance and usability standpoint, it was a huge challenge."

New Structures for Email Archiving

The team at Piedmont quickly realized the status quo just wasn't cutting it. They knew they needed a fresh approach to email archiving that could guarantee fast access and thorough, accurate research. At the same time, they decided to implement comprehensive email retention policies for all their employees, ensuring a streamlined process moving forward.

As they scoured the market for solutions, it didn’t take long for significant differences to emerge, especially regarding scalability and pricing structures. An early win for the solution Piedmont eventually chose, EMA by ARTEC IT Solutions, became evident during this selection process. Unlike competitors who charged a per-user fee—which could potentially lead to high ongoing costs—ARTEC's model was based on a comprehensive solution price, geared towards serving a specific number of users. This approach presented a clear advantage in both budget predictability and overall value.

Given that the healthcare provider anticipated significant growth in the future, scalability and cost control became critical factors.

Starke Performance der Suchfunktion

In addition to focusing on user autonomy and system performance, the integrated search function of EMA quickly demonstrated its value. Now, employees can conduct necessary searches on their own, without any help from the IT department.

The speed of the search engine is nothing short of impressive. Searches that previously took hours can now be completed in just a few seconds. Compared to the search functionality in Outlook, EMA offers far more capabilities, allowing for more complex search queries. This doesn't just make finding the needed email easier; it's also intuitive and straightforward to use.

Thanks to the additional Case Management feature, the legal department can independently use EMA for eDiscovery requirements and create their own cases. IT support is only needed now for particularly complex queries, streamlining the process significantly.

Streamlining Administrative Processes

Beyond the enhanced performance and user-friendly search functionality, Piedmont Healthcare's IT department has also seen significant administrative advantages from implementing EMA. This becomes especially evident when integrating employees and their mailboxes into the email infrastructure after acquiring a new hospital. In the past, this "onboarding" process for a new hospital involved a relatively complex and time-consuming procedure.

Previously, the process required setting up existing mailboxes within the new structure and exporting data into PST files using third-party solutions before transferring them. Now, with EMA, the approach primarily involves a PST export and creating a domain in EMA, into which the PSTs are fully integrated. New colleagues simply log in with their Piedmont accounts and instantly regain access to their mailboxes within the new infrastructure. All previous email messages are conveniently available through the EMA archive.

EMA has revolutionized email management at Piedmont, elevating it to a new level. The high performance of the search function, the seamless integration of mailboxes from additional hospitals and facilities, and not least, the aspect of data security, are significant benefits. This also provides us with the reassurance that we are exceptionally well-prepared in all things email.