ECRI, an esteemed national nonprofit committed to patient safety, recently bestowed its coveted 2025 Health Technology Excellence Award upon Greenville, South Carolina-based health system Prisma Health. Over the past half-decade, Prisma has surged to the forefront of South Carolina’s healthcare landscape, emerging as the state’s largest and most comprehensive health system, according to a recent ECRI news release. But it was in the face of a crushing crisis – Hurricane Helene of September 2024 – that Prisma’s robust care coordination strategies, emergency preparedness measures, and technology infrastructure were truly put to the test.
The health system employs a redundant network design to facilitate its continued organic growth as well as ongoing acquisitions. This strategically planned design features two connection hubs per region that bridge primary and secondary data centers. Prisma also boasts a multi-carrier cellular distributed antenna system, ensuring seamless coverage for both staff and patients.
These sophisticated network designs, along with initiatives like standardization of emergency department workflows and preparation of business continuity plans, were instrumental in the health system’s resilient response to Hurricane Helene. Despite the extensive impact on all health systems in the Hurricane’s path, Prisma was uniquely prepared to face the challenge, owing to these preemptive improvements. Prisma found itself in a position not only to weather the storm but also to effectively carry out its mission in the chaotic aftermath, the health system notes.
Daniel Leonard, the vice president of technical services at Prisma Health, further pointed out that their primary level 1 trauma centers retained connectivity with the Epic EHR throughout the crisis. Even amid widespread cellular outages, communications within the system were never disrupted, and both power and connectivity were reinstated in the two most severely affected hospitals in under half a day.