-California Department of State Hospitals Employee
The California Department of State Hospitals (DSH) oversees five state hospitals across the state. More than 90 percent of patients admitted to DSH are mandated for mental health treatment. DSH works closely with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to treat inmates and parolees at four of their five state hospitals. As a result, correctional and state hospital staff collaborate on a daily basis.
The Department also works with the City and County on a variety of public safety issues. Like many agencies, DSH lacked agile, standardized protocols for orchestration, asset management, both software and hardware – all of which are important aspects for DSH in managing patient care.
“We helped DSH see what equipment/assets they actually have, how they can more efficiently track their incidents, and how can they track what they have for assets, and then how to automate processes and consolidate systems to make work easier on their team.”
-Tony Devine, Platform Architect
Finding the Right Solution
DSH knew they needed a solution, and they needed it to work correctly from the start, to help them manage their complex organization, multiple facilities, and thousands of employees. DSH leadership had already decided that ServiceNow was the platform that would bring them into the 21st Century. They needed a partner that could help them refine business processes, configure their solution, and support the enablement of their teams.
Cask was fortunate to be selected their service provider and trusted advisor and we’ve supported DSH through a multi-phase implementation that continues to expand the ServiceNow platform to meet their maturing business needs.
Laying the Foundation
Because of the disparate locations and changing needs of its employees, DSH employees wear multiple hats. When Cask was brought on, the team was tasked with identifying licensing needs across the organization to streamline expenditures and percent compliance issues.
“This [platform] is like building a house or a building out of Legos,” Program Manager Gregory McTague said. “You need first to lay the foundation. And once you’ve laid the foundation and you’re mature enough, the foundation is done, then you go to the next level. And then you can further customize. And as you grow as an organization and mature with these processes, the platform or the tool will help you to mature further.”
The foundation for DSH was basic ITSM, upon which incident management, problem, change, knowledge and service catalog were built, to bring the state into compliance. Cask was also able to implement a Service Portal for end users, allowing them to communicate with doctors in the network.
“We have helped their team make small changes based on the current system, and they have continued to improve their process,” Devine said. “DSH is continuing to look at other parts of the platform to get everything centralized, so that’s another bonus. So, we are continuing to provide whatever guidance we can to help roadmap and help them in their processes.”
-Tony Devine, Platform Architect
Previously, the agency’s equipment tracking was done manually, so their ServiceNow implementation was able to automate this process. Using software asset management, DSH was able to track select licenses across the different hospitals in their network. Bringing DSH’s legacy systems into the fold was the final step in the process.
“Because it was so diversified, information [from the legacy system] was hard for DSH to track. Bringing those legacy systems [online made it possible to] get all the information in one place,” Devine said.
All the while, the team from Cask was in communication with lead stakeholders to make sure their out-of-the box implementations were running smoothly, and that customization was completed to DSH specifications.
Overall, DSH was satisfied with the process and the partnership that the Cask team provided, which has led to more projects and additional work to bring DSH further on their maturity curve.
To learn more about Cask and the digital transformation journey, visit casknx.com.
