"Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!" - Mexican Bandit, "Gold Hat", The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Foundations are important, wouldn't you agree? After all, who'd want to live in a house built without a foundation? Or work in a twenty story building who's builder neglected to provide a solid foundation for it to rest on. No one, that's who. Too many businesses don't think they need no stinkin' solid Information Technology foundation. If they think about their stinkin' IT foundation at all.

Pretty much everything rests, or should rest, on a solid foundation, including your Information Technology infrastructure. Lack of a solid IT infrastructure is a serious problem we encounter time and time again. Why is this issue so common? Primarily because the typical small business IT infrastructure was initially put in place by a non-IT person; usually the business owner, or friend or relative. The stinkin' foundation was pieced together with no short- or long-term plan to speak of.

Compounding the problem, the shaky foundation evolves over time to meet the changing needs of the business. By this time, it's likely that the "revolving door syndrome" of IT service providers has set in; an IT service company is hired, they tweak the IT foundation, screw up and is out the door. Followed by another IT company. And another and another. It happens all the time, and the result is that over time, an already inadequate foundation is eroded by this series of IT "experts" making changes here and there in response to the "tyranny of the now" and with no "master plan" of how various foundational resources should interconnect to support the business today and tomorrow.

It's on top of this rickety foundation that the average medical practice hopes to build its Electronic Health Records (EHR) structure. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or structural engineer) to see that there is trouble ahead. An EHR system is so intertwined into the fabric of the average practice, that the office is incapable of functioning effectively without it. Now, picture this mission-critical resource built upon and totally dependent on an inadequate IT foundation, and it's obvious that failure is the likely result. And failure in this context is an expensive proposition.

What do you do? You make sure your IT foundation is strong enough and stable enough to support whatever EHR system you intend to deploy. And you need to be confident that your IT foundation is capable of supporting your practice into the future.

And how does all this happen? It starts with a call to The ITeam. We are the IT foundation experts. The ITeam will make sure your IT foundation is solid, stable and secure. - Mike