World-Class Health Care Requires A World-Class Digital Boardroom

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Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) is a world leader in pediatric healthcare, with a medical staff of more than 650 physicians and over 3,500 employees. The hospital is renowned for excellence in pediatric medical care from birth through adolescence.

The sensitive nature of Miami’s meetings demanded that they be conducted with an emphasis on information security. Prior to 2014, Miami struggled with security issues while using a board portal provider, and decided to discontinue using that provider. This led to a locally hosted permission based share drive to conduct their board meetings, emailing out PDFs for their board members.

The share drive they set up posed its own problems in the boardroom. They continued to print expensive and burdensome paper bound books to be circulated at meetings. Further, MCH continued to find it difficult to compile those board books and files on the share drive, making it difficult for their board members to securely review when on the go. After reviewing several alternative solutions to eliminate emails and go paperless, MCH settled on Passageways’ OnBoard to deliver a rich, responsive, and secure boardroom experience. “We can just load all the material into OnBoard, and no longer have to worry about emailing or printing the documents,” said Samir Wadhwa, Manager of Business Systems.

“We met them as part of our CHIME partnership, at the HIMMS conference in Orlando,” said Paroon Chadha, Co-Founder and CEO of Passageways. “Their CIO Ed was instantly engaged upon seeing our paperless board solution. We are indeed proud of helping them focus on their mission in their board meetings. We were happy to take the lead, setting up their solution and ensuring their hospital was protected by world-class security.”

Today, OnBoard streamlines Miami Children’s Hospital’s process of board book creation and secure distribution. They began implementation with the Hospital’s board, then the various committees, followed by senior leadership, assistants, and now stretching multiple layers deep into their institution. The whole implementation process was complimented by live support and a rich base of educational material, Mr. Wadhwa added “In my many years of implementing software, Passageways was a top tier experience, whenever we needed support you were there. That was one of the key factors that impressed me.”

The ease of navigation within the application has been one of the highlights for Miami. OnBoard provides for annotations to be made directly on the directors’ documents, allowing notes to be stored as they go using their iPads. Additionally, all the previous agenda items are stored on the app, making reference to previous pages or meetings as simple as a few taps away. “Often during a meeting, people will jump around. Someone will say, we are on page 20, and with just a click everyone is on the same page,” said Millie Baro, Executive Assistant to the President and Chief Executive Officer. The IT department is enthusiastic about the ease and flexibility of creating the board books, “Administratively it cuts down on time.”

Miami has witnessed real savings by reducing paper and printing costs. Their board packets would average 165 pages, with 18 board members, coupled with printing, binding, and shipping costs. The various committees meet about 16 times a year, and a conservative estimate of total savings across these meetings exceeds $9,500 annually.

The power of OnBoard is now in the hands of dozens of executive committee members. The result is true cost savings and a secure boardroom. When OnBoard helps a hospital streamline their meetings and reduces process costs, those health care providers stand better equipped to focus on their patient care. Passageways is proud to be a part of Miami Children’s Hospital’s transition to an easy, powerful, and secure boardroom.