Breaking the Mold with Bold IT Solutions with ThriveWell Tech
Located in Charleston, S.C., Bishop Gadsden Episcopal Retirement Community is a Life Plan community serving more than 500 residents and employing 600 team members. The 100+ acre campus features independent living apartments and cottages, as well as an assisted living building, and an award-winning health care center.
In 2021, Bishop Gadsden and the Information Technology team sought an experienced strategic partner to create a comprehensive five-year IT roadmap to further strengthen the work already in place.
IT Assessment & Strategic Positioning
Bishop Gadsden’s decision to hire ThriveWell Tech to conduct its IT Assessment and Strategic Plan was based on work ThriveWell Tech conducted for the community in 2020. In that project ThriveWell Tech served as their low-voltage planning consultant for an expanded health care and rehabilitation center. ThriveWell Tech’s engineers ensured that the right hardware, systems, and WiFi capacity was in place to support the necessary clinical and operational software platforms and resident needs.
Discovery & Benchmarking
For this project, ThriveWell Tech interviewed Bishop Gadsden leadership, team members, and residents on their technology expectations, needs, and pain points. In addition, they worked closely with Karlie Foster, Director of Information Technology, and her team to complete benchmarking assessments on IT policies and procedures, training, governance and communication, infrastructure, and more.
IT Assessment Focus
“Incredible depth” of knowledge with cybersecurity and clinical systems
Tiered recommendations for varying budgets
A roadmap that could adapt to shifting priorities
Experience in senior living and outside industries
Collaboration with the on-site IT team
3-Year IT Roadmap
Assessing cybersecurity was Bishop Gadsden’s highest priority, followed by network infrastructure. Says Karlie Foster, “We needed to be certain we were prepared to support what the community’s associates and residents expect to be able to access and accomplish from a technology standpoint.”
Upon completion, the ThriveWell Tech IT Assessment consultant met with the IT team to discuss more than 50 pages of recommendations, charts, and diagrams to help get Bishop Gadsden to its ‘desired state’ of supporting business excellence through ‘never down’ infrastructure, professional engineering and business systems support, and ‘eyes forward’ governance.
Securing CARF Re-Accreditation
Bishop Gadsden’s trust was recently confirmed during its CARF International re-accreditation process. As the Director of IT, Karlie was interviewed by surveyors, who are pulled from within the industry they are assessing. The surveyor “seemed surprised by what she saw, the depth of the plan and the resources we were putting toward technology,” Karlie says.