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Daughters of Charity Services of New Orleans (DCSNO) recently launched a new community health center in St. Cecilia, marking a successful collaboration of administrative, architectural and IT management efforts. The goal: to bring quality health care to under-served, post-Hurricane Katrina communities. DCSNO, with IT Management provided by ThotBox Solutions Group, is providing two new facilities and upgrading existing ones that will support approximately 45,000 patients, tripling their current capabilities. In this article, we examine how technology had to be carefully planned and then implemented to increase the efficiency of launching and running a large scale community healthcare center project. DCSNO, led by President/CEO Michael Griffin, an experienced professional in hospital administration, discusses the considerations for planning and implementation of technology. Mr. Griffin holds both entrepreneurial and public health management experience under his belt and takes an honest, direct, and practical approach to the capabilities and challenges of technology in the community healthcare center setting. Consideration: In-House IT Staff vs. Outsourcing At the outset of any project, the decision on whether or not to hire a consultant must be weighed upon the capabilities of current staff or the cost effectiveness of hiring dedicated staff. Michael Griffin: "We came to that decision by knowing our own administrative limitations and saying look how much more can we squeeze into this already busy day and team? How much can we squeeze into that and when do we need to outsource it? Especially when we need a specialist that can keep up with all these things on the day-to-day. We wear a lot of hats and do a lot of different things, but we're not specialists on the technical side of technology and we need to have that type of expertise especially when we're building something new like we are now."

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