Gateway Health Plan Turned to NetApp

In 1992, Gateway Health Plan was established as an alternative to Pennsylvania’s Department of Public Welfare’s Medical Assistance Program. Gateway is now known as one of the best Medicare programs in the United States and has grown to over $1.2 billion in annual revenue and 275,000 members within the state of Pennsylvania.

This sharp business growth has come with an increasing emphasis on IT and a steep rise in data storage demands. To help increase IT flexibility and efficiency, protect its IT investment, and provide improved services for members, Gateway turned to NetApp, Inc.

Gateway’s holistic, proactive approach to healthcare, called Prospective Care Management (PCM), identifies the behavioral, environmental, economic, medical, social, and spiritual issues a member faces, and designs a health plan tailored to an individual’s needs. This both uses and creates vast amounts of data.

Gateway estimates it has saved millions of dollars in hardware, space, power, and staffing while boosting productivity with NetApp IT and server virtualization technologies.

Gateway worked with NetApp Professional Services to replace its existing EMC systems, virtualize 95% of its servers, and keep data accessible even in the event of a major disaster.

Gateway has been able to slash data recovery time objectives from 72 hours to less than 4 hours. Recovery point objectives have also dropped.

Gateway has been able to establish test and development environments that facilitate further PCM investments.

Solution Detail
The NetApp Unified Storage Architecture enabled Gateway to choose lower-cost iSCSI over Fibre Channel whenever it felt it was appropriate, saving an estimated $500,000 a year.

David B. Guilinger, director of Information Services, Gateway Health Plan, said: "Our NetApp storage environment has become not only a key piece of our infrastructure, but also the foundation of how we both rapidly and efficiently provide data-driven PCM solutions to our clients."

Chris Cummings, vice president of Product and Solution Marketing, NetApp, said:" Our flexible IT solutions help customers keep their businesses nimble and respond to changing requirements. Gateway’s example is a reminder that making your IT infrastructure fast and efficient is not just about business benefits, but sometimes about helping companies bring solutions to market that make a measurable difference in people’s lives."