Key Takeaway
- The main advantages of IT outsourcing in the healthcare industry include cost reduction and control, increased company focus, and access to top-tier talents.
- Freeing up internal resources for other uses, and utilization of resources not readily available internally.
- Healthcare IT outsourcing lowers costs by 30% to 60%.
- By 2027, it is anticipated that the global market for healthcare IT outsourcing will amount to $64 billion.
The worldwide healthcare IT outsourcing market is expected to reach $390.7 billion by 2024 as a result of COVID-19’s breakout. Currently, outsourcing healthcare IT is a preferred option for 75–80% of healthcare facilities.
Hospitals are looking for ways to develop more complicated solutions as old systems are replaced with new ones. It is challenging to steer the intricate digitalization process and create efficient technological solutions for the healthcare industry utilizing only internal resources. or at least not in a timely or satisfactory manner.
In turn, healthcare IT outsourcing will assist you in locating qualified professionals and free up funds for innovation. You can assign control of the entire IT department to them, as well as activities like service desk, application support, network infrastructure, and legacy maintenance.
Why should healthcare facilities choose to outsource their IT?
According to the Deloitte Global Outsourcing Survey 2020, clients have a variety of outsourcing goals, including enabling technology, agility, scalability, and innovation. However, their main objective is to boost their economy. Let’s look at how outsourcing healthcare IT aids in the resurgence of the healthcare sector.
1. Reduced operating expenses
Lower operating costs — Healthcare organizations can avoid spending extra money on infrastructure, resources, and equipment to receive secure and cutting-edge IT services by outsourcing their IT needs. Healthcare IT outsourcing companies have their own infrastructure and personnel, all of whom are technologically sophisticated and knowledgeable about the most recent industry trends. As a result, there are significant savings.
2. Edge-cutting tools and technologies
e32Similar to how a carpenter knows which tools to use, healthcare IT outsourcing businesses understand what will best satisfy the needs of their clients. As a result, they have the best, newest, and most cutting-edge tools and resources available in their toolboxes.
3. Numerous available options
A business that outsources IT healthcare can offer all of these services, as well as quality assurance and testing, starting with mobile app creation and maintenance. All you need to do is name it to obtain it.
4. Service available 24/7
Continually available service Healthcare is no longer restricted to the set hours of 9 to 5. Since specialists may now provide care almost 24 hours a day thanks to the internet! However, their system might fail at any moment, and their flexible care might change. Where would they find the maintenance at those strange times? Another justification for addressing IT outsourcing is for organizations in the healthcare sector. This sector can approach companies providing IT healthcare outsourcing with their issues at any time of the day thanks to their flexible services and maintenance assistance.
5. Complete security
The healthcare sector is vulnerable to cyberattacks as a result of the significant volume of sensitive data that is generated daily. A McAfee analysis from 2017 claims that the healthcare industry has become the primary target of cybercrimes as a result of a 67% increase in malware. Additionally, since HIPAA requires total data security from such crimes, the healthcare sector will undoubtedly find ways to avoid being fined. Another justification for the healthcare sector’s decision to outsource IT healthcare services is this. Since the majority of businesses who offer IT outsourcing to the healthcare sector make sure to comply with all HIPAA requirements, their clients won’t eventually run into legal problems.
5 Tips for Successful Healthcare IT Outsourcing
1. Pick a partner first, not a vendor.
What’s the distinction? For X dollars, a vendor offers basic service delivery, such as taking your service desk calls. A partner is devoted to doing far more and aggressively assisting you in enhancing your IT operation. The partner consistently seeks to enhance the performance quality, cost-effectiveness, and user experience for your users. It collaborates with your hospital to realize its long-term goals. Genuine partners are dedicated to the hospital’s accomplishments and see these accomplishments as their own. These people care and will go an extra two or three miles if necessary; they are not 9 to 5ers. Some of Phoenix’s greatest outsourcing successes have involved working with clients where we took over entire IT departments that had a variety of failed projects and successfully completed them all.
2. Insist on defining precise services and performance thresholds.
It could be tough to identify all critical performance indicators up front in a complicated outsourcing arrangement. SLAs must, nevertheless, form the basis of your contract. If some of those essential criteria prove difficult to come by at first, insist on the use of best practices, such as effective change management and project management techniques. The finest outsourcers to deliver the results you require are those committed to industry best practices like the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) standards and the PMI project management standards.
3. Pick a partner with expertise in outsourcing hospital IT.
There are many service companies in the market that believe they can manage hospital IT outsourcing but either don’t realize how unique it is from other industries or view it as a body-shop contract, meaning 3 FTEs for 5 years. Outsourcing a hospital function to a business with limited hospital experience is the riskiest case. In order to have a successful outsourcing engagement, all parties must be aware of the critical links between IT, clinical care, and revenue cycle operations. An important factor that is frequently overlooked in the fervor of competitive bidding is extensive knowledge with HIPAA rules. The patient care activities, claims management, and even patient safety at your hospital stand to suffer greatly by selecting an outsourcing company that is not specifically focused on the healthcare industry.
4. Be totally open-minded.
Too frequently, in an effort to contain expenditures, the hospital initially downplays the difficulties it is experiencing. The process of designing an outsourcing engagement includes recognizing the problems and creating solutions. This concept is quite similar to the work of an IT strategic planning project in the context of a comprehensive outsourcing engagement. Being ambiguous makes the short- and long-term planning that the outsourcer will carry out on your behalf less effective. Conversely, watch out for suppliers you’re interviewing who might try to “up play” the difficulties by introducing a few extra services or FTEs here and there to boost sales.
5. Finally, pick a partner you can trust.
No matter how meticulously you define services and create service level requirements, unforeseen issues will still occur. To anticipate every scenario in advance would be impossible given the complexity of the healthcare operational environment and the fluidity of the future. It’s crucial that both parties collaborate to identify how these new requirements fit into the scope of the existing work and what might be additional (or even lowered) effort. The solutions required may extend the definitions of scope in the original contract. Today, suppliers and hospitals far too frequently fail to invest the face-to-face time necessary to build rapport and assess the likelihood of a mutually beneficial long-term partnership. A multi-year IT services contract necessitates time and effort in building a trustworthy relationship between the senior leadership of both parties. Purchasing software or hardware over the phone or by email may work just fine.
Healthcare providers might contract with tech partners for certain technologies and solutions.
Outsourcing healthcare IT solutions are possible. Vantage Market Research projects that by 2028, the market for healthcare IT outsourcing will be worth USD 96,098.58 million, growing at a CAGR of 8.93%. Learn more about the most recent healthcare outsourcing possibilities and how to put them into practice right away.
System development for electronic health records (EHR) outsourcing
Hospitals and other medical facilities throughout the world are already using this kind of healthcare IT system. EHR software traditionally needs the following elements:
- Integrations of specialist care providers and medical billing services
- Medical staff portal and appointment scheduling software for patients
- Patients’ electronic health records, which contain information about their medical history, lab results, diagnoses, radiology files, etc.
You can also enhance an old EHR solution to increase functionality and efficiency by including additional modules, features, and software integrations.
Outsourcing hospital information & management system development
The support of IT outsourcing partners can also be used to construct hospital management systems. Medical staff can use this tool to track healthcare resources and workflows, manage hospital inventories, and provide compelling data interchange between hospital staff and departments.
Additionally, it might be connected to elements geared for pharmacies and medical HR software. provided by partners in medical IT outsourcing
- Integrations for managing patient interactions with eRx and EHR/EMR modules
- Billing and claims management for patients
- Administration of financial resources and patient healthcare plans for admission and discharge of patients
- organizing medical appointments and distributing inventories of medical equipment
Outsourcing for e-prescription software and pharmacy information management
Pharmacy management systems can be small and simple or big and complex, depending on size and complexity. You can create customized setups of diverse pharmacy software modules and features with the aid of an IT healthcare outsourcing service provider. Here is a quick list of important characteristics:
- Managing the entire medical dispensation process, including e-prescriptions and their interpretation
- Integration of IoT with hardware for label printing and automatic dispensing
- AI-driven analytics and reporting Notifications by email or mobile device
CRM customization and integration
Hardware and software for flexible diagnostics have already been developed and successfully used. Software algorithms can now more accurately detect neurological, cancer, and diabetes conditions.
Internet of Things
Large data volumes must be continuously gathered, organized, and analyzed by healthcare companies in order to base future treatments on it. Assembled IoT gadgets connected to the centralized network served as our means of departure. A dedicated hospital information system platform is used, and it is built on a high-performance IoT platform.
Blockchain
It aids in the implementation of extremely dependable systems for capturing, archiving, and keeping track of shipment circumstances.
Telemetry remedies
When necessary, it aids in facilitating remote communication between surgeons.
Now that you know, you can use any current, in-demand technology in healthcare as organizations and neural networks.
Benefits of outsourcing IT healthcare.
According to the Deloitte Global Outsourced Survey 2020, customers have a number of outsourcing aims, including enabling technology, enhancing agility, scalability, and innovation, among others. However, they priorities keeping a competitive edge, providing the finest care possible for the patients, and enhancing their services.
1. Advanced protection
Due to the volume of sensitive data collected everyday, the healthcare industry is susceptible to cyber-attacks. A McAfee report claims that a 67% increase in malware has made the healthcare sector a target of cybercrime. As a result, we concentrate on healthcare data transfer, which is essential in the industry’s ongoing transition to an analytics-driven one so that healthcare IT can be outsourced.
2. Reducing the project’s spending plan
Healthcare organizations are prevented from investing in new machinery, supplies, and infrastructure in order to acquire high-quality IT services via IT outsourcing. Healthcare IT outsourcing companies have highly technical infrastructure and staff with the most recent industry knowledge.
3. Finding and assembling the team quickly
Businesses may meet all of their IT workforce requirements concurrently by working with an effective tech partner. With an outsourced team, you have an outsourced manager who is familiar with the group enough to effectively lead it.
4. No new workplace is required.
You automatically take on responsibility for managing the official registration, taxation, and workspace organisation of new hires. In turn, healthcare IT outsourcing can help you save money and time by avoiding all those burdensome, frequently only temporarily required items.
5. Accelerated time to market
The process of creating your own healthcare solution is time-consuming, difficult, and demands specialised IT knowledge. Instead, you might contract with a group that has the necessary skills, resources, and a history of providing clients with similar solutions. We can manage all outsourced tasks, including upkeep, testing, and quality control for patient CRM, CTMS, EDC platforms, GMP platforms, and mobile applications.
By leaving the rest to healthcare IT outsourcing solutions, healthcare providers can focus on what they do best. To outsource your software development to Arkenea, get in touch with us right now if you require a professional IT team to collaborate with you based on managed IT or project augmentation services!