Earthquake law pushes hospitals to spend big on IT

Computerworld - A California law that mandates earthquake-proof hospitals is sparking massive investments in IT infrastructure upgrades by health care companies in the state, starting with the hardening of data centers but also including the deployment of faster networks, wireless systems and other new technologies.
For example, Sacramento-based Sutter Health expects to spend the better part of $1 billion on technology upgrades at its 26 hospitals over the next 10 years as a result of the law, CIO John Hummel said last week. As the not-for-profit company rebuilds some of its facilities to comply with the law, it plans to invest in new bandwidth and storage capabilities in an effort to meet processing demands well into the future, he said.
Mark Zielanzinski, CIO at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, said his facility is building a data center and demolishing its existing one as part of an overhaul of its entire campus to meet the law's requirements. The new data center is due to be fully operational by March 2005.
In addition, the data center reconstruction prompted a server consolidation and upgrade project, Zielanzinski said. El Camino Hospital is consolidating more than 150 smaller servers onto two Unisys Corp. ES 7000 systems, each of which can support up to 32 Intel processors. A matching set of servers is being installed at a new disaster recovery site 120 miles away, in more geologically stable Sacramento, he added.
The law, known as the California Facilities Seismic Safety Act, was passed in 1994 after the Northridge earthquake struck north of Los Angeles and caused $3 billion in damage to 23 hospitals. But the measure is just now becoming an urgent matter for many health care companies, which must comply by 2008 -- or 2013 if extensions are granted.
The California HealthCare Association estimates that it will cost $24 billion to earthquake-proof or rebuild a total of about 2,700 hospital buildings throughout the state. IT costs could account for $2.4 billion to $3.6 billion of that, said Gerard Nussbaum, a consultant at Kurt Salmon Associates Inc. in Atlanta.
The staggering costs played a big role in convincing Sacramento-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. to seek buyers for 19 of its 36 California hospitals. Tenet last month said it would cost $1.6 billion to bring the facilities being divested into compliance with the state's seismic standards.
But for all the expenses it's generating, the earthquake law gives health care firms an opportunity to upgrade their IT systems, says Nussbaum and CIOs such as Sutter Health's Hummel. It provides an