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Client: West Feliciana Hospital – St. Francisville, Louisiana
Partner Since: 2012
Reach: Serving thousands across rural Southeast Louisiana and neighboring Mississippi
West Feliciana Hospital relied on fragmented systems that demanded multiple redundant data entries and transfers. Duplicate feeds strained bandwidth, especially critical for radiology imaging, and slowed care delivery. The IT team needed a unified, reliable way to manage data efficiently without disrupting hospital operations.
Over time, rural hospitals like West Feliciana often accumulate a patchwork of systems, each requiring its own interfaces to keep workflows running. Initially, the hospital managed separate, direct connections from its EHR to every vendor endpoint - sending identical data through multiple redundant routes. This approach strained bandwidth and created inefficiencies. After discovering the concept of a central hub, West Feliciana transitioned to the ELLKAY platform, consolidating all master feeds into a single, streamlined pathway. The result: no more duplicate transfers, faster data movement, and optimized bandwidth for critical operations.
As a rural facility, West Feliciana relies heavily on remote operations, particularly in radiology, where large image files must be transferred to off-site specialists. Previously, these transmissions burdened their bandwidth, competing with multiple redundant data transfers. By shifting to the ELLKAY platform, they significantly improved efficiency, reducing the number of independent connections from twenty to a single streamlined pathway. This not only enhanced data management but also preserved vital bandwidth for essential tasks such as radiology imaging, ensuring faster, more reliable access to patient information.
West Feliciana Hospital’s journey with ELLKAY began in 2012 through its affiliated clinic, AdvancedMD, and has since evolved into a robust enterprise data management partnership that underpins nearly every aspect of its operations. Initially drawn to ELLKAY’s ability to streamline costly and time-intensive interface setups, the hospital adopted its pipeline model to consolidate master feeds, eliminate duplication, and accelerate integration, especially during its transition to the TrueBridge EHR system.
“Meeting the needs of the community is the primary purpose of rural health systems. To do that effectively, we need reliable tools to transport data to and from the right places. ELLKAY helps facilitate this process, ensuring smooth data exchange along our digital highway.” Denise Paul, IT Director, West Feliciana Hospital
Over time, ELLKAY’s platform became the hospital’s data backbone, enabling rapid vendor connections, enhancing uptime, and safeguarding sensitive information. This was especially critical during the 2024 national data breach, when ELLKAY swiftly severed ties with the compromised system and facilitated a secure pivot to a new billing provider.
By upgrading their legacy interface engines to a scalable, cost-efficient interoperability solution backed by decades of healthcare expertise, West Feliciana Hospital has been able to accelerate integration, resulting in minimized delays and lightening IT workloads. Today, ELLKAY powers West Feliciana’s secure, high-speed data infrastructure, ensuring reliable transmission of patient records and imaging across its expanding rural network.
West Feliciana Hospital expanded its use of ELLKAY from integration to enterprise-level data archiving, enabling seamless transitions from legacy systems to modern EHRs like athenahealth. At the same time, it preserves long-term access to patient records. This scalable approach minimizes data loss and lets the hospital retire outdated systems without disrupting care.
Denise Paul noted, Once a contract is signed with ELLKAY—which is imminent—the process will move much faster than if we handled it separately.”
The hospital is also launching one of Louisiana’s first community paramedicine programs, using connected paramedics to support discharged patients with telehealth, transportation, and home care, underscoring its commitment to proactive, accessible, and patient-centered care.
Together, West Feliciana and ELLKAY are building a future-ready healthcare network that reduces IT strain, accelerates data access, and delivers seamless, high-quality care across every connection.
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