eTrust SSO Allows Simplified Access to Wide Variety of Applications

Rex Healthcare, part of the University of North Carolina Health Care System, is a private, not-for-profit healthcare system located in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Rex hospital campus is the heart of its network of services, including a 394-bed acute care hospital, family birth center, cancer center, two convalescent care centers, same day surgery center, heart center, adult and child day care centers, and two wellness centers. Rex Hospital treats more than 25,000 inpatients each year and maintains twelve inpatient and nine outpatient operating rooms, and supports a full-service laboratory and a diagnostics unit.

With a stellar reputation and high customer satisfaction record, Rex Healthcare’s admissions continue to increase even as many other hospitals' admissions decline. Rex Healthcare is comprised of a complex network of more than 3,500 people working in various departments and disciplines who rely on as many as 23 server applications to do their jobs. eTrust Single Sign-On (SSO) from Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) provides user access to these best-of-breed applications.

Managing Best-of-Breed Applications with eTrust SSO
In 1999, as part of its Y2K planning, Rex Healthcare was faced with the decision of updating its existing mainframe application, making it Y2K compliant, or replacing it. The decision was made to replace the single mainframe application with a number of best-of-breed client server applications. At the time, that meant going from one application to 9 different applications, each with its own security structure. Consequently, Rex Healthcare customers were potentially faced with going from one ID and password to a number of IDs and passwords, depending upon what applications they were accessing. Another concern was the level of security inherent in these applications, which at times was not very high.

The decision was made to investigate single sign-on solutions to see if and how they could benefit Rex Healthcare. Two of the company’s main goals in selecting a product were to find a product that was flexible and non-invasive.

Much diversity exists among Rex Healthcare’s application platforms, according to Tom Schnittker, Manager of IT Security and Data Center Operations at Rex Healthcare. Therefore, a single sign-on solution would need to be flexible and non-invasive to accommodate its diverse character-, Windows- and java-based platforms, as well as a number of different applications that were being introduced into the environment, ranging from 32-bit Windows to Web-based applications.

In the end, Rex Healthcare decided that eTrust SSO would best meet its needs. It took approximately 6-8 weeks for Rex Healthcare to go through product selection, implementation, testing, and go-live.

“With so many applications from different vendors, we didn’t want to have to alter any of the programs to fit the access solution,” said Tom. Because it is non-invasive, CA’s SSO allowed us to stay away from vendor support issues that would arise from altering applications.”

SSO also allowed Rex Healthcare to maintain a higher security level within its applications. “Some of the applications don’t have the strongest inherent security features, such as the ability to pick strong passwords and expire passwords,” Tom explained. eTrust SSO gave Rex Healthcare those security options.

Bringing Rex Healthcare’s System into the 21st Century
In preparation for implementation in May 1999, Rex Healthcare worked with a CA representative to write script and identify methods of collecting user information. In July, they shut down all computing functionality, and turned off its mainframes for a 36-hour period. In this time, Rex Healthcare’s team replaced desktop PCs, implemented a client server model and SSO and upgraded from Windows 3.1 to Windows NT. The environment went live with 9 applications and 3,500 users.

“With the changes that our computing environment went through in 1999, going from a single mainframe application to a variety of applications, eTrust Single Sign-On was a lifesaver for IT and our customers,” said Tom.

Today, Rex Healthcare uses eTrust Single Sign-On Version 6.5 on an AIX operating system on the server side and Windows NT operating system on approximately 2,000 desktops. Approximately 4,300 users, including a physician staff of over 900, access 23 different applications through eTrust SSO.

Organizational users, including nurses, doctors, payroll, case management and human resources staff all access their critical programs through eTrust Single Sign-On. Some of these applications include: 3M Clinical Workstation, HBOC Star 2000, Lawson (HR), Stockell Order Entry, HCS (Pharmacy), Quadris (Radiology), and Phycom (Case Management). Rex Healthcare continues to add approximately 3-4 new applications to its system per year.

Users are authenticated through eTrust SSO with a User ID/Password combination. eTrust SSO is currently being used at Rex Healthcare’s main campus, its Cary, NC facility and several physician practices. It has integrated eTrust SSO with Novell’s Application Launcher for application delivery to the desktop.

Easy Access to Applications
eTrust SSO has allowed Rex Healthcare’s system users to access a wide variety of applications without the stress of having to remember all of the associated passwords and IDs.

This more convenient access means less demand on the technical support team. The number of calls for forgotten passwords is minimal, resulting in potential cost savings for technical support time, according to Schnittker. “Our users don’t fully appreciate what eTrust SSO does for them, because they’ve never had to remember several passwords for different applications,” said Tom, who considers customer satisfaction to be the largest ROI of implementing CA’s SSO solution. "Healthcare providers, the ones that are directly involved with patient care, aren't necessarily experienced with computers and may not be willing to spend a lot of time on it -- and they shouldn't have to, that's not what their job is about. Our goal was to introduce a solution that would reduce the frustration they may have experienced from needing to remember multiple passwords so they could focus on actually using the software to the benefit of their patients."

Rex Healthcare upgraded from eTrust SSO 3.1 to 6.5 last summer. In the coming year, Rex Healthcare will likely start looking at integrating alternative authentication methods,