At Devoted Health, ChromeOS works side by side with employees
David Gallant
Head of Enterprise Technology and Support, Devoted Health
Devoted Health treats its Medicare Advantage members like family with ChromeOS
Editor’s note: Today's post is by David Gallant, Head of Enterprise Technology and Support at Devoted Health, an all-in-one healthcare company on a mission to dramatically improve the health and well-being of older Americans. At Devoted Health, we believe healthcare should be a better experience for patients and clinicians. That’s why nearly all of our staff use Chromebooks, which keep patient records secure and helpful applications at fingertips of end users.
Today, over 2,000 employees utilize Chromebooks while supporting Devoted Health members across 13 U.S. states. We started as a hybrid business in 2017, and ChromeOS has been instrumental in maintaining this distributed work model.
By going all-in on ChromeOS, we reduced our total cost of ownership of devices by 44%. We’ve also seen 24% fewer cyberattack attempts. A significant indicator of our IT efficiency with ChromeOS is that we only need 12 support engineers — that's one for every 200 people lowering the management costs significantly.
Meeting bold business goals with ChromeOS
Devoted Health launched with 100% Google solutions for its corporate infrastructure, including ChromeOS and Google Workspace. From day one, we envisioned a company where the technology stack would be completely different from most healthcare businesses. Traditional ways of managing healthcare involved on-premise hardware and VPNs. At Devoted Health, cloud productivity tools give us maximum flexibility with lower overhead costs. They also improve business resiliency, and provide a secure environment without relying on legacy systems.
This was a bold business goal, but we met it. Currently, Devoted Health’s digital contact center manages almost 8,000 inbound calls daily. Equipped with Chromebook laptops and Dell displays, our team manages this high volume, all while working remotely. When our Devoted Medical clinicians visit patients, they carry Chromebooks equipped with cellular connectivity. This ensures constant access to Orinoco, our proprietary healthcare software. It also simplifies the number of tabs, and lets our clinicians focus on empathetic care instead of technology woes.
Customizing security
Because we work in healthcare, we need security we can trust. In addition to automatic updates that strengthen security, ChromeOS gives us more ways to lock down data. We have a policy we call “Devoted work on Devoted hardware.” Employees can’t sign in to Devoted Health apps if the devices are not on hardware procured and managed by our team.
You hear stories about business systems getting hacked when someone tries to sign in from a home computer. With ChromeOS and Workspace, we don’t have this problem. We also enforce geographic locks on the devices, and we disable non-essential browser extensions.
Lean yet effective device management
At Devoted Health, we make a point to get our staff on board quickly and securely. That’s why we leverage ChromeOS with zero-touch enrollment. We procure Chromebooks in bulk from a third party, and hardware is drop-shipped directly to our employees in time for their start date. Profiles are pre-configured so new employees can simply sign in with the hardware 2 factor authenticator and begin working the same day. The majority of employees at Devoted Health — from Member Service Guides to doctors — get the same ChromeOS device.
Standardizing on Chromebooks across Devoted Health allows for instant replacements if a device gets damaged. We can ship the same familiar Chromebook immediately, minimizing downtime. Even for rare malfunctions, a powerwash reset takes less than 10 minutes and eliminates the need to reinstall software. Employees simply sign-in and resume their work seamlessly.
Our ultimate goal as a company is to help our members live their best lives. Our operations and finance teams totally support this goal, we make careful decisions on how we spend. Investing in ChromeOS devices means that every dollar spent on technology is done thoughtfully, with the well-being of our members, patients, clinicians, and all of our employees squarely in mind.
