80% Of Healthcare Providers Outsourcing Some IT Services
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Enabling Healthcare Providers to Focus on Outcomes
Most healthcare providers leverage outsourcing for some level of IT function and redirect critical human and capital resources to primary business objective. This is according to a recent white paper by Allscripts, titled “Enabling Healthcare Providers to Focus on Outcomes.”
According to the white paper, “Health IT departments are being asked to meet the high demands of the industry and operate with limited resources, all while managing a tight budget and focusing on strategic goals. Technology Business Research, Inc. found that close to 80 percent of U.S. healthcare providers engage in selective outsourcing for at least some of their IT needs, and over one-fifth of providers have turned over all of their day-to-day IT operations to managed IT services partners.”
As the complexity of healthcare continues to expand through implementation of EHRs, HIEs, ICD-10, risk-based payment models, and a renewed focus on patient engagement, providers are being expected to fulfill all these new demands and still remain focused on their core mission of delivering healthcare services that result in improved outcomes for patients. At the same time, providers are grappling with a growing scarcity of talented healthcare IT professionals in an ever-competitive market.
Hardware and software innovations in healthcare have mirrored changes in IT in other industry sectors. The organization and operational benefits of rapid advances in technology are complicated in healthcare, however, by the increasing regulation of privacy and data governance within the healthcare industry. Healthcare providers must stay abreast of regulation changes or risk non-compliance and competitive disadvantages, exerting additional pressures on expensive labor resources that are already inadequate.
This is where managed IT services can help. Services like Allscripts can enable providers to meet these challenges and refocus on achieving their primary organizational missions by enhancing the predictability and flexibility of IT-related talent and capital expenses, empowering providers to improve workflows, to focus on patient engagements and to reallocate existing in-house IT staff to more strategically-oriented projects. By outsourcing IT services, healthcare providers can focus on what they do best: providing healthcare.
Many best-in-class healthcare organizations have leveraged Allscripts Managed IT Services to enhance the predictability and flexibility of their IT-related talent and capital expenses, and have realized improve workflows, a renewed focus on patient engagements and reallocation of existing in-house IT staff to more strategically-oriented projects.