Genoa Healthcare
Improving the Quality of Life for Individuals
Dedicated to serving the needs of those in the behavioral health and addiction treatment communities, and others who have complex, chronic health conditions, Genoa Healthcare is the largest provider of pharmacy, outpatient telepsychiatry and medication management services. With over 15 years of experience, Genoa Healthcare serves more than 650,000 individuals annually, and fills more than 16 million prescriptions per year. They are the fifth largest drug chain in the United States with over 400 pharmacies located onsite within community mental health centers.
Their mission is to deliver outstanding value to consumers and partners by improving the quality of life for individuals living with behavioral health and other complex health issues through a higher level of pharmacy and telepsychiatry services.
“My CEO and CFO were thrilled with the results we got. I hear my peers express fears and complain about moving to the cloud. Moving to the cloud isn’t that hard when you have the right partners. I’m a believer in the Avail model.”
Challenge
Genoa’s business is a real-life, mission-critical operation. The patient populations they serve have challenging and complex behavioral health and addiction issues, meaning that they rely on Genoa’s timely ability to properly dispense medication. The company was growing operations exponentially, both organically and through acquisition. They had outgrown the capabilities of their technology operations, managed IT infrastructure and service desk vendors. Genoa needed a solution that would ensure the right providers were engaged to limit risk and support their business as they grew.
“We needed to make changes. While we have an incredible staff, we don’t do these types of evaluations. Our in-house staff did not have the technological depth, experience or expertise to evaluate the vendor marketplace. We didn’t have the time to learn on our own or create a due diligence process, and hiring a team for the short term didn’t make sense.”
Approach
Genoa consulted with Avail Partners to design a strategy and solution for next generation services and provide due diligence on potential vendors.
Avail aligned Genoa’s strategy and culture in collaboration with their C-Level leadership and stakeholders to define business, technical and compliance requirements that could scale with exponential growth. While keeping Genoa anonymous, Avail independently produced Market Intelligence Assessments for each solution set, initially identifying 33 vendors best suited for a variety of the requirements. Avail’s process ensured there were no distractions from disruptive vendor sales teams, allowing the client to be hyper-focused on their end-goals. Avail provided workshops to gather requirements and collaborate with Genoa’s staff. Then Avail created a consolidated operating model and independent solution design to ensure scalable standardization exceeding HIPAA levels, with HITRUST level compliance. The Avail team interviewed and evaluated potential vendors, and then made recommendations to the Genoa team.
Services
Solutions Design and architecture Validation
Market Intelligence Assessment and Due Diligence
Proposal Management (of 33 potential vendors)
Cloud rationalization
Compliance and security
Results
Leveraging optimized vendors through Avail’s process, Genoa has created a sustainable, compliance driven best-of breed solution that allows the company to grow without being limited by legacy operations and compliance liabilities. SLAs and contract flexibilities were dramatically improved further reducing risk to Genoa. Genoa can now roll out new pharmacies faster and expand their business with new confidence. Hard savings of over $20 million will be achieved during the first five years of implementation. Initial savings of $200K a month were achieved with $1.4M in cost avoidance. The new operation is highly superior with huge gains in resiliency and ability to supporting compliance. Genoa avoided the need to hire approximately twelve non-revenue producing IT staff and alternatively invested that spend. Genoa now benefits from improved process, procedure and governance.
On presenting to the Board of Directors after completion John McConnell states. “My CEO and CFO were thrilled with the results we got. I hear my peers express fears and complain about moving to the cloud. Moving to the cloud isn’t that hard when you have the right partners. I’m a believer in the Avail model”