Radiology Associates P. A. (RAPA) Boosts Uptime for Life-Saving Imaging with Colocation
Find out how Radiology Associates P.A. (RAPA) achieved always-on imaging performance with TierPoint's reliable data center and storage solutions.
“TierPoint has done an excellent job at hearing our business requirements, then meeting us where we're at while continuing to be flexible. They listen and understand where we’re heading to build two-way trust.”
Jeff Wieler
CIO at RAPA
Introduction
Radiology Associates, P.A. (RAPA), has been in business in Arkansas for over 100 years, building a legacy of innovation and patient-first care. The company prides itself on offering “state-of-the-art diagnostic radiology services” throughout the state, most of which rely on real-time submission and interpretation for quick diagnosis and treatment of patients. 100-plus facilities rely on RAPA to fulfill their imaging needs, whether it’s for a routine, elective procedure, or emergency imaging after an accident. While the company's contracts are with healthcare facilities, RAPA never loses sight of the true end customer: the patient.
Challenges
In the diagnostic imaging industry, where every second counts, uptime, high availability, and business continuity are indispensable. However, RAPA was operating from an aging on-site data center that was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, especially with environmental disruptions adding to the challenge.
RAPA needed a more secure and resilient infrastructure that could support its commitment to patient care and HIPAA compliance, which necessitates three copies of sensitive patient data. The company’s growing archive—including large, high-resolution 3D mammography studies—was straining cloud performance and cost-efficiency. RAPA wanted a colocation partner that could deliver a compliant, scalable, and high-performance environment to support current operations and future growth.
Solution
TierPoint provides colocation, storage, and remote hands for RAPA at the Little Rock, Arkansas data center. All of RAPA’s workloads run back to the data center, which powers the primary applications radiologists use to relay interpretations of what they see to relevant hospitals and clinics. Sometimes, these radiologists are not close to the data center, and even in these remote work cases, transmission needs to be instantaneous.
RAPA started the move by establishing a 1-Gbps connection to the old data center and migrating workloads to TierPoint. According to Jeff Wieler, CIO of RAPA, “The goal was to make sure that if anything happened to our original data center, we could continue operating without missing a beat.” That vision became a reality, with TierPoint now serving as the primary hub, complemented by local disk storage and a HIPAA-compliant cloud provider to fulfill its three-copy data protection strategy.
Security concerns are equally important to latency. HIPAA compliance mandates long-term image retention—for example, mammography must retain images for 10 years, and the 3D images used in these tests can be gigabytes a piece. This means lots of data is getting pushed and needs to be stored accordingly. While RAPA was using a public cloud environment for retention, they’ve since changed to a Pure Storage solution with TierPoint. This on-premises model delivers the speed, control, and cost efficiency RAPA needed, enabling a flexible, private, cloud-like experience that keeps pace with their growing demands.
Results
As RAPA migrated to TierPoint, radiologists quickly saw performance stabilize, shifting from disruptive “red” and “yellow” days to consistently smooth “green” days. Since the transition, the company only experienced very limited downtime, with issues being clearly identified and easily resolved with TierPoint. Jeff Wieler said, “Realizing that we’re in a spot where things are state-of-the-art, and there isn’t a single point of failure in the path for most things made a big difference.”
The migration also unlocked greater operational flexibility. With TierPoint’s reliable connectivity, RAPA can support remote staff working seamlessly across the state and beyond. Emphasizing the advantage of centrally located, high-availability infrastructure, Wieler said, “We’re no longer limited to hiring based on geography. With the right connectivity, we can bring in the best talent, regardless of where they live.”
RAPA also benefits from TierPoint’s remote hands services, which provides peace of mind that on-site support is available when needed. TierPoint’s portal has also proven valuable to their lean, 11-person team. “TierPoint has done a very good job of making things elegantly simple… when it’s all there, it just works,” said Wieler. This intuitive platform, paired with proactive notifications, makes infrastructure oversight efficient and stress-free.
In addition to infrastructure stability, the TierPoint environment enables RAPA to deploy and operate advanced on-premises AI models that aid them to make intelligent business decisions. These models help forecast diagnostic volumes, balance radiologist workloads, and automatically route cases to backup providers during spikes in demand or when estimated turnaround times risk exceeding internal thresholds. This ensures faster, more consistent care and improves efficiency across RAPA’s statewide network.
If you are looking for an elegantly simple, enterprise-grade solution—whether for storage, cloud, or colocation—start a conversation with TierPoint today.
At A Glance
Industry
Healthcare Technology
Technology
Colocation and Storage - Little Rock data center
Challenges
Radiology Associates, P.A. (RAPA) faced outage vulnerabilities and compliance risks at their aging on-site data center. They needed a more secure state-of-the-art, high-availability colocation solution that could also scale to support the explosive growth of imaging data across their statewide network.
Solution
Migrating to TierPoint’s colocation data center in Little Rock, Arkansas, allowed RAPA to house their workloads in a centralized location, reducing latency, improving uptime, and enabling seamless access for remote radiologists. The Pure Storage solution supported RAPA in their data retention requirements and will allow them to easily scale the solution as their imaging records grow.
Results
As RAPA migrated to TierPoint, performance stabilized, transforming unreliable “red” and “yellow” performance days into consistent “green” days. The team now operates in a secure, compliant environment with improved uptime, fast access, and a user-friendly portal that offers clear system visibility and proactive alerts.
Website
https://rapaxray.com/
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