Deals on wheels: a Texas community hospital develops a detailed assessment tool for all IT purchases that accommodates input from a variety of internal users.

The best technology buys represent a strategic combination of thinking outside the box and coloring inside the lines. At Brazosport Memorial Hospital (BMH) in Lake Jackson, Texas, the proverbial box has no borders, but the coloring lines are clearly drawn. They are, in fact, crafted, designed

Brazosport Memorial Hospital is a 165-bed not-for-profit community hospital that serves the nine-city population comprising Brazosport and 70,000-plus residents in southern Texas. The hospital is about 50 miles south of Houston. Unlike many community hospitals, BMH is not affiliated with a larger healthcare system or an integrated delivery network. It stands alone in competing with several other community hospitals, all within easy driving distance, and also with multifacility and nationally recognized integrated health systems in Houston. Just to survive, and certainly to prosper, Brazosport Memorial Hospital must do everything right.

Information technology is one of those "right" critical success factors in the hospital's three-year strategic plan, begun in 2002. "Our mission is not just to compete. It's to be the provider of choice for this community," says Jesus ("J. J.") Cruz, BMH's database administrator. "Technology figures prominently into our plan."

According to Cruz, clinicians and patients alike want to see modern and efficient IT at work in their hospital of choice. "From the public's perspective," he says, "if the hospital's technology isn't state-of-the-art, the hospital might as well be treating patients with leeches. Our community's perception of our ability to provide quality care is largely driven by the technology we apply. Patients want to see technology that builds their confidence in the hospital, and they want to see hospital clinicians using that technology with confidence."

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BMH devoted the first year of its three-year process to building a suitable infrastructure. The IT department in particular, comprised of seven employees, felt that the hospital should be ready for anything, ready to embrace any hardware, software or platform that the enterprise evaluated and decided was critical for success. "We need to be able to pivot and turn in any direction the administration wants to head," says Cruz. "We felt this capability would be part of our competitive backbone."