Dive Brief:
- A new study performed by IT company Peak 10 has concluded that as many as 60% of health IT professionals surveyed feel that government regulations are weighing down their industry.
- Peak 10 researchers, which followed execs and IT pros from 149 healthcare organizations across the US, found that many HIT professionals don't have the skills to meet the emerging body of new regulations such as the ICD-10 transition and Meaningful Use rules. Ninety-four percent of health IT respondents said these rules are negatively impacting IT strategy and decision-making.
- According to Peak 10, health IT pros surveyed are responding to these shifting demands on their departments by adopting new strategies, increasingly using cloud tech for Software as a Service and non-mission critical workloads, working with partners to address security vulnerabilities and relying heavily on third-party health IT consultants to supplement their technical knowledge.
Dive Insight:
It's little wonder that health IT pros and departments are relying on outside consultants to help them meet ICD-10 requirements and Meaningful Use standards, as well as partnering up to beef up their security infrastructure. Health IT organizations have little choice but to spend big bucks on help with these compliance issues, maxed out as they are with managing often-problematic and hugely-expensive EHRs.
The problem is, this solution may unsustainable. Hospitals may be able to bear the crushing costs of hiring top-flight health IT consulting firms for a while, but eventually these services will strain budgets to the breaking point.
The key here is for hospital IT leaders and staff to get lots of training from the third-party experts they've hired. If hospitals don't manage to absorb lots of valuable know-how while the consultants remain on board (or more alternative solutions to managing consulting costs like Deloitte's Evergreen don't emerge) the industry could reach a crisis point when the consultants pack up and leave.