Case Study

Madigan Army Medical Center’s IT Needs Stay ‘Healthy’

Wood River Federal provides Information Management (IM)/Information Technology (IT) support to a major DHA facility and all ancillary clinics.

Customer

Defense Health Agency (DHA)

Services Supported

Cybersecurity/RMF, Help Desk, Network Operations, Staff Augmentation, Systems Administration, Telecommunications

Location

Various locations in and around Tacoma, WA

Performed By

Overview

Located just south of Tacoma, WA, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, is home to the Madigan Army Medical Center, a tertiary care medical center and home to one of only two designated Level II trauma care center centers in U.S. Army medicine, and only one of four such trauma centers in the state. 

Madigan is a vital part of the community that, along with the main hospital and multiple satellite clinics, handles more than 1 million outpatients per year, performs hundreds of surgeries, and fills thousands of prescriptions. With such a heavy demand on its services, keeping track of data, protecting patient information, and assisting the staff on all its IT and communications needs is critical.

Wood River Federal (WRF) has been supporting Madigan Medical Center and its satellite offices since 2016, in responsibilities that include

  • project management
  • cybersecurity
  • network administration
  • information assurance
  • voice communications
  • ticketing services, and
  •  help desk

“None of our team will write code, but all of them can read it and manipulate it,” says Don Lipper, general manager of U-Tech, part of the Wood River Federal group of companies. “If we see issues, we can fix the code. That’s part of the trust they have in us.” 

That trust by Madigan is due to the skills of Wood River Federal’s people. Wood River provides educational opportunities for its team, and they prefer to promote from within those who are working onsite at Madigan. Lipper also stays on top of communications with the Wood River Federal onsite team and Madigan’s command personnel, visiting the Tacoma sites twice a week.

“As much as it impresses them (Madigan command) that we are talking with them, I think they like it a lot better that we are there more often to support our own people,” says Lipper.

That level of support, and the confidence it inspires in the U.S. Army command, played a part in a recent upgrade to the Madigan telecommunications system.

Wood River Federal recently installed an internal-only voice-activated communications program. It included telephones, printers, and everything else connected to the IT system.

Wood River Federal’s team knew the new system was on the way but didn’t know when it would arrive. The system had to be installed during off hours to have as little effect as possible on Madigan’s operations—mostly nights and weekends. Within 48-hours of being notified the system was available, Wood River Federal assembled rollout plan that would meet Madigan’s 60-day installation goal

Supporting MHS Genesis Transition

“With 45 days we were able to transfer over everything Madigan needed,” says Lipper. “Six of our people were presented with awards from the government for them going ‘above and beyond’ in the deployment.”

One of the other issues Wood River Federal faces on a regular basis is in ticketing services. They address any issues that any government employees or military at Madigan has with IT support. On average they may have more than 700 open tickets for one month. They close more than 97% per month, with the remaining unclosed items caused by waiting for the delivery of needed hardware or software, says Lipper.

Wood River Federal continues to help Madigan fulfill its IT-related needs so that the doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel can continue to serve the Joint Base Lewis-McChord community.

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