To support the broader vision for a large not-for-profit health system in the Southeast, Ovation Healthcare helped modernize and stabilize the organization’s IT Service Desk, improving response times, resolution rates, and the employee experience.
Background/Challenge
A multi-facility health network serving patients across several counties sought to sharpen its focus on healthcare delivery while ensuring its hospitals, ambulatory care centers, urgent care locations, outpatient surgery centers, and physician practices continued to receive high-quality IT support. To achieve this, the leadership team partnered with Ovation Healthcare to rebadge IT employees and leverage specialized expertise to strengthen IT service delivery.
Solution
During the assessment phase, Ovation identified opportunities for improvement within the Service Desk: average time to answer calls exceeded one minute, and first-call resolution rates hovered right above 50%.
To help enhance these metrics, Ovation consolidated the health system’s Service Desk into its established service operations, applying proven processes, performance standards, and workforce optimization strategies.
In addition, the assessment revealed the opportunity to develop a formal Level 2 support structure. Without that structure, clinical application issues were frequently escalated directly to Level 3 resources, increasing ticket volume, extending resolution times, and placing significant demands on senior application analysts.
Ovation assembled a team of certified Epic analysts and placed them in dedicated Performance, Application, Reporting, and Training (PART) positions. This team rapidly developed an Epic troubleshooting guide, capturing known issues, tips, and best practices. The guide became the foundation of a living knowledge base, continually expanding to support faster resolution and consistent issue handling.
Results
These changes stabilized the Service Desk with L2 support and positioned it to better aid the system’s clinicians and staff, minimizing disruption and allowing them to stay focused on patient care. The impact was immediate and measurable:
- Average time to answer reduced from over one minute to 16 seconds
- First-call resolution improved from just over 50% to 76%
- Issue resolution time reduced to under 8 minutes for the majority of calls
- Abandonment Rate reduced from 7% to 3%
- Change Management Success rate has steadily increased from 88% to 97%
The impact of Ovation’s PART model was quickly realized:
- Resolved approximately 40% of tickets without escalation
- Reduced ticket volume reaching Level 3 application teams
- Improved triage quality, ensuring L3 teams receive better-defined, higher-value work
- Lowered on-call burden, allowing senior analysts to focus on projects and strategic initiatives
- Established faster, more consistent, and easily accessibleknowledge articles for self help
Testimonial
“Partnering with Ovation allowed us to improve the reliability and responsiveness of our Service Desk. Our employees see the difference every day, and it directly supports our broader vision.”
– Chief Information Officer
“I was on call pre-L2 desk, and 100% of my time was spent on tickets. This past week, I was on call, and while I did get some tickets, I was able to attend all my meetings and accomplish project work.”
– Application Analyst Senior
