Michigan company to direct MMH department

A Michigan-based company has become part of Marietta Memorial Hospital, taking on the director position of the hospital's information technology department.

"It's not outsourcing - it's actually insourcing," said Jennifer Offenberger, director of marketing and public relations for the Memorial Health System. "We're strengthening our organization with the best of both worlds."

The director for the department is from Care Tech Solutions, a Troy, Mich., company that specializes in helping organizations implement emerging technology and supports day-to-day operations.

All the department's current employees will remain in place at Memorial and only the director, Andy Altenberger, is a Care Tech employee, said Offenberger.

"We have no job loss," she said. "We're just adding to our knowledge ... we'll still have the knowledge and experience of our current staff and will now have an outside organization to take the lead on how to plan for and bring technology to our organization."

When the former director of the IT department made the decision to leave, hospital officials began considering the change to outside management, said DeAnn Gehlauf, senior vice president for business and organization development for the Memorial Health System.

"We took pause to think about what the best direction was for our future," she said. "This brings a lot of expertise and experience to us. The only industry they serve is health care."

The change is being made at a time when technology of all kinds is having an ever-expanding impact on the health care field, said Offenberger.

"It touches just about every aspect of what we do these days," she said. "We need a lot of planning and strategizing to bring the latest technology and the best services here because technology continues to drive care."

Offenberger said she expects the relationship between companies to be similar to the one Memorial has had with its food services provider, Philadelphia-based Aramark, for 50 years.

"It's been an extremely good partnership, and we've got a great relationship," she said. "I would expect this to be just as beneficial."

Feedback from other hospitals who have worked with Care Tech has been extremely positive, said Gehlauf.

The company offers both major outsourcing and facility management service agreements, as well as partial outsourcing.

A similar leadership change is not currently planned for any other hospital departments.

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lowellnative
07-20-09 12:11 PM »Report Abuse	Anything to make MMH look good.

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