Streamlining Healthcare Project Activations with FitUp: A Success Story with Northern Arizona Healthcare

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ABOUT NORTHERN ARIZONA HEALTHCARE

Northern Arizona Healthcare serves over 700,000 people across Northern Arizona, including Coconino County, the second-largest county in the U.S. by area. With critical services such as cardiovascular, cancer, orthopedic care, and the only Level 1 trauma center in the region, the stakes are high. Chronically overtaxed operational support services like Biomed Field Services, and Engineering must stretch even further during large projects.

THE CHALLENGE

Behind every healthcare construction project lies an intricate web of independent resource groups—each operating within its own scope. Without proper coordination, activation phases are often plagued by delays, unexpected costs, and frustration. This was the reality for Jill Worley-Shook, a Medical Equipment Construction Project Planner at Northern Arizona Healthcare (NAH).

“Healthcare construction project activation and transition to operations is often an overlooked and under-resourced effort,” says Jill. “It involves countless teams, including medical equipment planners, project coordinators, project managers, contractors, and IT and application support, all of which require careful coordination—something that often becomes an afterthought.”

FITUP’S SOLUTION

Faced with these challenges, NAH decided to pilot FitUp, a platform designed to provide comprehensive

visibility and control over healthcare construction activations. Jill describes their decision to try FitUp as

a low-risk opportunity with the potential for a significant payoff.

“As a smaller rural health system, we don’t maintain a large enough portfolio to justify a robust development team or dedicated operational support teams. FitUp gave us a scalable solution that would help with our challenges,” she explains.

FitUp’s key features, such as the Visual Fragnet and centralized issue tracking, provided real-time visibility to activation status and challenges. The platform’s dashboard offered access to information to a broad spectrum of project stakeholders, without requiring them to make site visits to get updates.

“FitUp made tracking and resolving issues quick and easy, even when we weren’t on-site. From equipment placement validation to logging failures of exam lights or faulty EKG machines, everything was centralized in one place,” Jill says.

THE RESULTS

Though NAH is still collecting firm metrics, Jill noted a marked improvement in the efficiency of

their Primary Clinic and Sleep Lab activations compared to earlier tenant improvement projects in the same building. Deliveries were streamlined, reporting became more concise, and FitUp significantly reduced the demands on NAH’s internal stakeholders.

“We saw the outcomes far exceed those of our earlier Specialty Services Clinic space and Outpatient Cath Lab activations,” she says. “FitUp made the whole process easier and more

efficient.” In addition to the platform’s benefits, Jill highlights the professionalism and support of the FitUp team. “They were always available, whether we were troubleshooting activation issues or configuring custom settings. Their support was invaluable.”

Looking ahead, NAH faces an even more significant challenge: a full-scale replacement of

Flagstaff Medical Center. With FitUp, NAH is confident that their teams are better equipped to handle the complexities of this massive project.

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Customer Success Story: How Criterion Used FitUp to Successfully Activate the Lennar Foundation Cancer Center

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Photo by City of Hope®

Project Background


The City of Hope Orange County Lennar Foundation Cancer Center began treating patients on August 22, 2022, immediately securing its place as Orange County’s most advanced comprehensive cancer center. One of only 53 NCI-designated centers in the United States, this visionary diagnostic and treatment facility creates a national model for delivering breakthrough research and pioneering treatments. 

The four-story, 192,000 SF building epitomizes City of Hope’s $1B+ expansion into Orange County, housing an expansive suite of ambulatory diagnostic and treatment services including Nuclear Medicine, Radiation Oncology, Imaging, Women’s Imaging, Ambulatory Surgery, Interventional Radiology, Laboratory Services, Clinical Research, Pharmacy Services, Infusion, Clinical Care, Sterile Processing and support spaces.

Several years in the making, the Cancer Center was conceptualized in 2017 and realized over a two-year construction period that began in September 2020. The path from conception to first patient involved coordinating numerous complex components to ensure the facility was more than just a beautiful, well-constructed building; it also needed to be a fully functional advanced research and treatment center to serve the diverse needs of Orange County’s more than 3.2 million residents. 

Criterion Logo
Criterion is a Pioneer in the Medical Equipment Planning Industry

To meet that objective, Orange County-based medical equipment planning firm Criterion was selected to provide medical equipment planning, equipment modeling, procurement assistance, logistics and activation services. With a 45-year history delivering specialized healthcare projects throughout California, Criterion offered the precise expertise required to successfully deliver the flagship facility.

The Challenge


Converting a building into an integrated academic and treatment center involves a number of complex, multi-faceted equipment planning and logistics processes. When procuring and activating thousands of equipment items, sorting and quantifying that data in spreadsheets can be cumbersome. Clients, staff, vendors, and even new team members, who may be seeing the data for the first time, can often be overwhelmed by the high volume of information. 

Criterion quickly recognized that standard spreadsheets and manual forms would not be capable of handling the level of complex data required by this cutting-edge project and sought a solution that provided the executive-level reporting that quickly quantified project data and statuses in an easily digestible manner and integrated with their medical equipment planning software, Attainia. They also needed a solution that could be utilized by all project team members, including various vendors, to track and manage assigned tasks and issues. 

The Solution


City of Hope, familiar with FitUp from use on prior projects, selected this solution to assist the project team in managing the activation of the Cancer Center. The City of Hope team introduced Criterion to FitUp, and after a short onboarding period, Criterion’s team was ready to embrace the program. 

“Like any new tool, FitUp takes some time to learn, but once our team was trained and proficient, it became an invaluable resource that we depended on throughout the duration of the project.”

Charlie Cornaire, Director of Procurement & Activation at Criterion

FitUp is a revolutionary cloud-based solution used by healthcare organizations nationwide to track, manage and coordinate thousands of pieces of medical equipment, IT components, and furniture (FF&E) information in one consolidated database, in real-time.

FitUp was the only solution that checked all the requirements for Criterion and City of Hope. The program’s full connection and integration with Attainia alleviated a large magnitude of manual data entry updates that Criterion was previously inputting into Smartsheet and Excel. 

The Results


“Our entire team was extremely satisfied with the functionality and efficiency that FitUp provided. We really appreciated the FitUp support team who were quick to answer any questions, provide training, and make adjustments to meet the unique needs of our project.”

Charlie Cornaire, Director of Procurement & Activation at Criterion

Using Fitup, Criterion was able to: 

  • eliminate the need to run pivot reports that would quickly become outdated;
  • create efficiencies from a vast amount of information that changed on a daily basis;
  • provide critical, real-time status updates to leadership on procurement and logistics processes; 
  • assign tasks and action items, and track issues across multiple vendors working on the construction project.

Additionally, during the activation phase, FitUp allowed Criterion to quickly conduct a punch list of the rooms to ensure all material was in place. With pertinent information at the clients’ fingertips, it also reduced the amount of RFIs that the Criterion team would have otherwise had to answer.

Criterion was thoroughly impressed by the simplicity and efficiencies associated with FitUp and looks forward to utilizing the program on future hospital projects.