| Ben Lorino, Director of Facilities, Vassar Brothers Medical Center |
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Vassar Brothers Medical Center has been using iDrawings® system for more than three years and finds it to be a very valuable tool in our facilities operations.
Vassar Brothers Medical Center consists of 10 buildings comprising a total built-up area of more than three quarters of a million square feet. As can be expected in a hospital organization of this size, the facilities infrastructure changes quite frequently and maintaining accurate infrastructure documentation is of utmost importance to us. We use Indus Systems and their web-based product iDrawings® to manage documentation maintenance and related functions.
Our association with Indus Systems goes back for more than eight years. Their initial project was to create a set of electronic drawings for our floor plans and utilities. Our hospital is many decades old and the buildings were built over many phases and over a number of years. A large number of drawings existed that represented numerous projects. Indus staff painstakingly analyzed these project drawings and conducted detailed field surveys. They then created CAD drawings that depicted current as-built conditions accurately.
When Indus introduced their web-based facilities management system iDrawings®, we were one of the early customers for this system. This system is used to maintain our as-built drawings as well as to comply with reporting requirements. iDrawings® is a multi-user system and it lets numerous users in the hospital access the as-built drawings right from our desk tops. We can view, share and print our drawings very easily just through an Internet browser. We do not need any expensive and complex CAD software.
iDrawings® also generates the square footage reports that show the space assignments for various departments and functions in the hospital. Before this system was put in place, we had to calculate the square footages from drawings which was extremely time consuming and prone to errors. With iDrawings®, the space assignment reports are always current and available.
We at the Facilities Department are committed to the use of t
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| Jim De Tata, Director of Facilities, Kimball Medical Center |
We use the iDrawings®, facilities management software system to maintain our facilities drawings and prepare Medicare/Medicaid square footage reports.
Kimball Medical Center’s financial reporting system requires, on a periodic basis, reports that show square footage assignments of various departments within the hospital. Our finance department needs these reports for many reasons including preparation of our annual Medicare/Medicaid Reimbursement submissions. Before we signed up for iDrawings®, we had to manually calculate the square footage of every room from drawings and then aggregate them. My department staff would spend many days to do this task and still could produce inaccurate results.
With our subscription to iDrawings®, Indus maintains all our floor plans. Whenever any changes happen on the floor plans, we send that information to Indus and they promptly update the drawings. My hospital staff can be assured that the drawings are always accurate and easily accessible.
Along with the updating of the drawings, Indus updates the databases as well. Since in iDrawings®, the drawings and database are closely connected with each other, we can generate square footage assignment reports simply by pressing a few keys. The program is extremely easy to use and does not require any special training.
In addition to the facilities department, other groups in the hospital also make use of iDrawings®. For example, the IT department uses these drawings for planning and maintenace of the telecommunication cable plant. iDrawings® serves as a centralized repository of facilities drawings that can be shared among all stake holders.
The facilities department is faced with the challenge of maintaining the hospital infrastructure so that our clinical staff can provide excellent care to our patients. iDrawings® is an effective tool that helps me and my department perform infrastructure maintenance and meet our reporting obligations.
Jim De Tata Director of Facilities
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| Bill Duffy, VP of Facilities Management, Portsmouth Regional Hospital |
“The iDrawings® application has an easy-to-use interface; for example, changing the assignment of a room from one cost center to another can be done easily with a couple of key strokes. The system allocates rooms to a number of cost centers and the aggregation is easily and automatically completed. It can prorate the common areas among many cost centers if needed. The graphical interface gives a spatial view of departmental locations.” “iDrawings® has proved extremely helpful to me in other areas also. For example, it maintains a repository of all current drawings that can be accessed by my staff, whenever they need them. Additionally, we recently conducted our Statement of Condition survey in preparation for our upcoming accreditation inspection. iDrawings® helped us share drawings and Life Safety information among a number of stakeholders during this process. The result was a thorough assessment and documentation of our condition. Having current drawings greatly improved the timeliness and quality of our review. Overall, I believe that Indus Systems’ services, including iDrawings®, offer tremendous value to professionals managing hospitals and other facilities.”
Bill Duffy, Vice President of Facilities Management
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| Marcus G. Jetter, George Washington University |
“Indus has been involved at the University as a facilities consultant since December 2000. Their work has focused on two major areas: · Creation of facility plans and space database; and · Implementation of iDrawings.com – an on-line drawings and data management system Their initial effort focused on creating “As-Built” architectural plans for 2 million square feet of academic space covering several campus buildings. Once the plans were created Indus developed a database of space utilization based on our specific requirements. The space database and the drawings have been integrated through the iDrawings.com system technology developed by Indus. The University has acquired a license to support up to 50 users on the iDrawings® platform. The system is being successfully used by a large cross-section of the user community. We are very pleased with the professional manner in which Indus has handled all the projects. Their support in implementing the iDrawings® capability in various University departments has been exceptional. We look forward to an enhanced iDrawings® capability to meet our growing requirements."
Marcus G. Jetter, George Washington University
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