By Treece Efird | Jun 2, 2023
6 minute read Technology| Blog| Managed Services
A recent Healthcare IT News article discusses how hospitals want to invest in emerging technologies – all of which have implications to the network. In fact, the foundation of all digital information exchanges in healthcare is a robust and dependable data network. Functions that are central to the processes of delivering quality healthcare such as electronic medical records access, digital image sharing, appointment scheduling functionality, billing solutions, medication dispensing, and financial reimbursement depend minute-to-minute on the ability to connect to systems on the network.
According to Network Computing, “managing systems, data centers, and infrastructures keeps getting more challenging as complexity grows. As a result, network, data center, and IT managers face a constant stream of problems that lead to outages, disruptions, and unhappy users.” Yet in a March 2023 online survey of College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) members, 22% named limited employee bandwidth/capacity to manage/execute on IT initiatives a top area of concern.
Network Management Strategy Matters to Patients, Clinicians, and the Bottom Line
When staffing inadequacies happen on the network management team, the implications can be dire – up to and including impact to patient safety. While other consequences are not so dire, they are nothing HIT teams want their clinical users or patients to experience:
|
Potential impact |
|||
|
Direct impact on patient experiences |
Indirect impact on patient experiences |
Cost |
Return on HIT investment |
Unplanned downtime |
x |
x |
x |
x |
Outages requiring fail over to paper-based processes |
x |
x |
|
x |
Duplication of effort to record data on paper and then perform data entry into a system when access is regained |
|
x |
x |
x |
Increased risk of cybersecurity-related event |
|
x |
x |
x |
Decreased physician satisfaction |
x |
x |
x |
x |
Reduced productivity |
x |
x |
x |
x |
Inability to attract and retain top HIT talent |
|
x |
x |
x |
Technical debt |
|
x |
x |
x |
Fortunately for patients everywhere, HIT leadership teams know the problem. They understand that change in healthcare IT methodologies, tools, support models, etc. comes with the territory of continuous improvement for users of HIT — clinical teams and patients. When asked to rank three most important areas for improvement in their healthcare organization, the majority responded with these as their highest priority:
More than half of those surveyed reported improvements in infrastructure and scale as second in importance to improving IT:
What’s harder to quantify and garner support from decision makers and stakeholders outside IT is a network management strategy that solves known problems and mitigates the risk of any new problems. What we do know, per research collected by Netscout, is that the cost of downtime in healthcare can be up to $9,000 per minute on the financial side and up to and including negative patient impact from a quality of care perspective. Managing EHRs, accessing images for diagnostic purposes and decision support/patient identification for dispensing medications are all dependent on network availability.
Operating a network efficiently, securely, and to user expectations in a world where remote services are widely accepted and preferred is tough – especially when combined with hiring challenges, economic considerations, and the obligation to rally your network and resources around functionality required by an organization’s strategic priorities.
And that begs the question – how good is your network management strategy? Is it adequate? Is it better than most? Is it among the best? Answer these questions for some insight.
1. Do your downtime and planned outage policies consider the implications to telemedicine, clinical decision support, image access, and information protection as well as the patient and care team experiences that are impacted?
2. Is your network monitored 24/7 by administrators with knowledge of what to do when diagnostics, troubleshooting and problem resolution are in order?
3. Does your strategy include experts on the local and cloud-based data warehouses you employ?
4. Do you feel confident in your team’s ability to enable 24/7 access to data and connectivity for positive patient experiences (ex: lab results, appointment scheduling functionality, ER waiting times information, and mental health professionals)? Does your confidence vary depending on who is on call or on vacation?
5. Does your resident network management team hold many or most of the following professional certifications?
6. Have members of your team developed a solid three-to-five-year plan for network technologies that minimizes outages, prioritizes recovery, and builds or protects a competitive advantage?
7. Are some members of your network team dedicated to providing “keep the lights on” services while others lead your organization’s strategic imperatives?
8. Are your customers satisfied and are your employees engaged?
Network Management Strategy Improvement Options
Given your answers to these questions and what they indicate about your network team’s capacity and skill set, you have likely identified some areas for improvement. The path to dramatic change will involve at least one of these options:
Addressing Network Management Concerns with Talent and Tools
What’s Next for Network Management
As tools to manage, monitor, and detect anomalies on networks become more sophisticated, command of those tools, and experience administrating them will continue to be an important element of network management strategy for HIT organizations. Addressing issues before they cause widespread problems will be the opportunity and the expectation. Network management teams will fare like so many other industries who are vying for a small pool of talent and augmented staff may come into even broader favor given that network management priorities can be accomplished remotely on or off the cloud. On location experts will still be required to conduct on-premises support and to drive strategic priorities of local leadership teams.
In short, network management is and will continue to be an all-hands-on deck effort using organizational creativity and budget stretching skills to orchestrate a customized solution for each HIT organization. Keep these questions in mind as you plan your team’s responsibilities and consider partners to ensure quality patient and clinician experiences.
For more information:
Director of Technical Services, CereCore
Director of Technical Services, CereCore
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