Secure Remote Access in a Flash? No Problem for the IT Heroes of VNSNY!

What happens when the nation’s largest home- and community-based healthcare organization has to mobilize its workforce to work remotely during an emergency global health crisis? “It’s a time to focus all our resources on enabling our clinicians and users to provide gold standard patient care,” says Michael Orlando, Director, IT Services. In fact, if you’re reading this article right now from your VNSNY laptop, phone or other device, you’ve got the heroes of the VNSNY IT team to thank. The connectivity they’re providing is what enables the rest of us to keep our organization and its many online facets moving like clockwork during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the biggest challenges the IT team faced in the last two weeks was to get VNSNY’s office staff at 220 East 42nd Street set up on laptop computers so they could work remotely, as ordered by Governor Cuomo as part of the effort to prevent further spread of COVID-19. The IT support team first had to sit down and create a project plan for moving everyone who had been working exclusively on desktop computers over to laptops—something that had never been done before. “Each laptop is customized for the individual user,” explains Sunny Babbar, Manager, IT Support. “It takes about two hours to set each computer up with software and the various applications and security features that are required for different departments to do their work.”

What’s more, all of this had to be done on top of the IT team’s normal workload. “Every day there were different challenges,” adds Ping Chin, Assistant Director, Systems Engineering and Support. “Nevertheless, our team deployed more than 360 devices in less than two weeks. Usually this would take over a month!”

Luckily, some extra help was already hand: Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the IT team had been working on a Windows 10 upgrade project and had hired additional workers to implement that project. As the crisis unfolded, the IT team was able to nimbly shift these workers into action to help get VNSNY’s workforce set up with secure remote access, so that just about everyone has now moved out of the building and is working safely at home.

“I was concerned because we didn’t have enough time to train the deployment consultants,” says Ping. “But they gave us great outcomes. I want to offer special thanks to Aundre Barton (Infrastructure), Syed Ali (ITQA) and James Castelino (Telecom) for helping with the deployment when we needed additional resources.”

Even with the extra hands, the team had to start early in the morning and work nights and weekends to get the job done. Jason Tsui, Manager, Corporate Support Service Operations, who oversees VNSNY Home Care’s MD Orders group, praises Sunny Babbar as “a quiet but amazing hero” in this effort. The work that Jason’s team does, keeping doctors’ orders and medical records flowing without a hitch, is crucial to providing care to VNSNY patients.

“Many of our staff had never teleworked before, and the foot traffic on the 6th floor where Sunny and the team were getting those laptops set up was unbelievable,” says Jason. “I was amazed at how fast this all got done, and with kind, efficient and excellent attitudes and service. There was a sense of urgency and professionalism that was remarkable, because everyone was also very calm—at least on the outside!”

During this two-week deployment, every area of the VNSNY business got IT assistance, including VNSNY Home Care, VNSNY CHOICE, Partners in Care, Community Mental Health Services, Hospice and MD Orders. In addition to setting up the 360 laptops in record time, the deployment team also helped people with new phones and wi-fi access, did back-ups and restores, and conducted hundreds of training and troubleshooting sessions across all of VNSNY.

“Days and nights, the team was running against the clock,” Ping notes. “All of them have done more than I could have asked for. Looking at the empty space now at 220, all I want to say is that we couldn’t have done this without any of them. They are the superstars and my heroes.”

Here is the full IT Support Team Staff, led by Ping Chin and Michael Orlando:

System Admin Team:  Sunny Babbar, Huy Duc Tran, Shawn Campbell, Dennis Nelson, Alex Fraiberg, Michael Descilien, Krishan Gupta, Luis Mirabal, Kevin Thompson and Roger Philbert.

Desktop Engineering Team: Claude Lissade and Steven Teng.

Deployment Team: Mackens Casimir, Gregory Texidor, Elvis Nieves, Maurice Brooks and Walters Cedeno.

To view more VNSNY Heroes of 2020, please click here.