Medical Associates: Delivering Scalable, High-Performance Connectivity Through a Trusted Healthcare Partnership
Connectivity built on trust and designed to scale
— Jeremy Wulfekuhle, IT Director, Medical Associates Clinic and Health Plan
Medical Associates: Delivering Scalable, High-Performance Connectivity Through a Trusted Healthcare Partnership
Challenge
Medical Associates is a physician-owned, multi-specialty group medical practice that also operates its own health plan. With a significant regional footprint, the organization supports over 200 providers across Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, with clinics concentrated within a 60-mile radius of Dubuque, Iowa. Across these multiple locations, reliable connectivity is essential to daily operations.
Medical Associates required high-performance connectivity to link their main locations in Dubuque, Iowa, a disaster recovery site in Marion, Iowa, and a satellite clinic. Key requirements included secure inter-site connectivity, scalability, cost efficiency and reliable performance across all locations. Beyond the technical solutions, the group was seeking more than a mere transactional vendor. They were looking for a long-term partner capable of supporting the company’s growth over time.
“We didn’t want a one-and-done vendor. We needed a partner who understood where we were headed and could grow with us. That’s exactly what we found with Segra.” — Jeremy Wulfekuhle, IT Director, Medical Associates Clinic and Health Plan
Solution
In 2020, Medical Associates turned to Segra for a high-performance network deployment, implementing dedicated fiber connectivity and Ethernet services to link its primary locations in Dubuque, Iowa, its disaster recovery site in Marion, Iowa, and a satellite clinic through a secure, scalable private network.
Despite the unique constraints of the pandemic landscape, Segra maintained a disciplined approach to ensure all deployment timelines were met. By adapting its project management strategy and staying on top of ever-changing resource availability and timing, the Segra team kept the deployment on track and successfully met aggressive deadlines.
The result was a fully operational, high-capacity solution designed to be fully scalable, giving Medical Associates reliable bandwidth between locations, low-latency performance for critical systems, and the flexibility to expand as operational needs changed.
For a healthcare organization operating across multiple sites, this network design also strengthened redundancy and disaster recovery readiness by ensuring that critical systems and data could continue to move securely between locations if one site experienced disruption. That level of resilience is especially important for maintaining access to applications, communications, and internal systems that support both patient care and health plan operations.
Since the initial deployment, the relationship has grown beyond a traditional vendor engagement into a strategic partnership. Medical Associates now operates on a robust, reliable network capable of supporting the complex workloads of a multi-state medical provider.
The dedicated fiber architecture also supports the secure transport of sensitive operational data between facilities, helping Medical Associates maintain dependable connectivity for everyday workflows while supporting the security and continuity standards required in healthcare environments.
In addition, ongoing collaboration with Segra’s dedicated account executive has provided proactive recommendations, responsive support, and consistently high service levels. As a result, Segra has become a trusted long-term partner, delivering dependable connectivity as the organization continues to grow.
“Segra has been the long-term partner we were seeking, moving far beyond a transactional relationship. The robust fiber network, combined with their proactive support, has given us the reliable, high-performance connectivity essential for managing our multi-state practice and planning for future growth.” — Jeremy Wulfekuhle, IT Director, Medical Associates Clinic and Health Plan