Success Stories

Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) | Download Success Story

Where network health and human health go hand-in-hand


When the nation's largest not-for-profit home health care agency installed PathSolutions' Network Monitor, the IS team gained the ability to remotely support the organization's 2,450 registered nurses. Having a smooth-running network is especially important at Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) because the nursing staff works remotely and requires optimal connectivity."PathSolutions saved the VNSNY team valuable time," said Art Fields, manager of the telecommunications network.  "It's important that the agency's nurses have the ability to connect with the two core data centers when using their digital pen tablets."

Challenge:

Monitoring and managing a VoIP network designed to remotely support  more than 2,400 visiting nurses in the most cost effective manner.

Solution:

PathSolutions’ Network Monitor

Result:

Maintenance-free, continuous monitoring, fast issue identification and resolution, capacity usage visibility for optimal network management.

How VNSNY Settled on PathSolutions' Network Monitor

Prior to installing Network Monitor, the VNSNY IS team was often unable to perform their duties in a timely fashion.  IS experts were forced to troubleshoot remote connection problems while remaining on site.

"Two years ago we had no visibility into the network at all except looking up statistical information," said Edward Lee, senior network engineer, who implemented Network Monitor with fellow-worker Fields. "Instead of being reactive, Network Monitor helped us to be proactive by generating an email report everyday to tell us where to look for problems. From there, we could go back and look at a port before it became troublesome."

Shortly after joining VNSNY, Lee was assigned the task of researching forward-thinking network monitoring tools. The IS team was well-aware of the importance of staying one step ahead of potential network glitches.

 VNSNY evaluated several off-the-shelf solutions, but none of those was effective at meeting the team's  lofty goals. "Those tools were either resource intensive or gave up/down port information," Lee said. "The bottom line is that they failed to run as consistently as Network Monitor while collecting historical details."

About Visiting Nurse Service of New York

The Visiting Nurse Service of New York is the largest not-for-profit home health care organization in the nation. In 2007, the organization provided 2,248,000 professional home visits covering everything from pre-natal to end-of-life care to more than 131,600 patients throughout New York City, Westchester and Nassau Counties. Licensed by the New York State Department of Health, VNSNY is fully accredited by the Community Health Accreditation Program (CHAP) of the National League for Nursing.

The Need for Seamless Efficiency During Growth

Fields and Lee say they are sold on Network Monitor because of its effectiveness and scalability. "As we're growing we want to stay efficient," Fields said. "Network Monitor simplifies things. We have an up-to-the-minute status page that shows our network. We can access that information from the office, home, on the road — and even on a PDA if we want to."

There are over 350 campus network devices and things are only expanding. "These sites contain nurse stations where the workers can pull sensitive patient information from the mainframe and push back their information.  To support this user volume, network visibility is important.

So What Makes Network Monitor Special?

With all of the T1 & Frame-relay lines connecting various spokes to the hub, it's critical that Network Monitor be able to consistently:

  • Monitor all of the network interfaces
  • Remain maintenance free
  • Capture historical data
  • Be easy to use

"Network Monitor is a service that you just leave on and run," Lee said. "I have network data at my fingertips that goes back 450 days since I turned the application on. Network Monitor tells us how many ports are being used and it tells me which link on a particular port is being highly utilized. This is all very important because VoIP traffic is real-time and we need to know how a link is being utilized."

Learning how to use Network Monitor was simple. "We downloaded the trial version and upgraded it, which was painless. I didn't lose any of the information that already existed," Lee said. Adding Network Monitor is especially important when he brings up new sites and is looking for potential trouble spots.

With no onsite training necessary there is really no downside ― including price. "In terms of functionality the price is great," Lee said. "My manager thought it was a great buy for the functionality provided."

With almost no support required, Lee is hard-pressed to think of a reason that his fellow system administrators shouldn't use Network Monitor. "You have to try Network Monitor in order to believe it," he said. "It gives us a god-like control over the network."

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Testimonials

"PathSolutions Network Monitor lets me get complete visibility into errors and utilization throughout the network with the least amount of effort."

Bob Konigsberg
Principal
Network Evaluation