IT Networks and their Undeniable Impact on Patient Experience and the Bottom Line

Healthcare network management scenarios are among the most complicated since they are the foundation for modern healthcare experiences with EHRs, digital imaging solutions, telemedicine platforms, and other patient care related systems. Network teams at healthcare organizations focus on minimizing disruption to prioritize patient experiences and contain costs. Consider these impacts that can define patient experiences - and the reputation of a healthcare network’s management team: 

State of Healthcare Network Management 

In a recent survey of College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) members, CIOs continue to grapple with insufficient resources against a rising amount of challenges and technical debt. 

• 83% expressed concern around technical debt 
• Top concerns of tech debt included aging IT and limited talent pipeline (28%), outdated infrastructure or equipment (26%) and project or deadlines where scope creep increases the cost (12%). 

Managing and supporting networks and data centers, modernizing them, and ensuring they meet the ongoing and future needs of their organization requires more expertise and experts than many healthcare organizations can attract and manage – or can afford.  

Building Your Case for Partnership 

Given the pressure to innovate, optimize, and support according to expectations, compliance, and budget, organizations are focusing on core competencies and partnering for the remaining services that can be delegated to a partner’s team. Why? These are some of the top reasons healthcare organizations partner to elevate patient experiences and to manage costs: 

• Consolidate vendors for streamlined operations (more services with fewer vendors for economies of scale). Chances are you can cite other examples (supply management, food services, cleaning, hospitality, physical security, etc.) in your facility for services that are delegated to a partner rather than taken on as a competency and responsibility of your organization. 
• Offload routing, switching, wireless, firewall, SDWAN, VPN, and other management and support functions to grow the capability and capacity of your technical team. This management maneuver, often referred to as “shift left” is common and proven in system support scenarios where issues requiring higher level system knowledge and organizational strategy understanding are reserved for advanced analysts who are paid more for that insight and expertise. 
• Share the burden of managing cybersecurity defenses. Defending against the bad actors and malicious perpetrators takes all of us in healthcare working collectively to limit and mitigate risk. Recovering from natural disasters takes time and expertise. Both scenarios are made more manageable with combined expertise and capacity of an organization and its HIT partner. 
• Optimize the budget for network services while expanding the capacity and return on investment. Subscribing to expert services at consistent cost and high-quality service is key to maintaining your organization’s independence and stability. 

Partnership introduces the potential to elevate the scope of your organization’s network services with resources that hold professional certifications and growing knowledge as part of the partner’s professional development programming. Your team will still need to know your services, your community needs, your organization’s goals, and your strategic plan. Joining forces with an extended team can be the key to helping your team do all that is expected and needed of them and your network to achieve high quality patient experiences and an opportunity to more effectively control costs.