FierceHealthcareFierceHealthITFierceHealthFinanceFierceEMRHospital ImpactFierceMobileHealthcare   FierceCIO

Study: Hospitals plan IT investment despite financial stresses

December 13, 2008 — 4:53am ET | By Anne Zieger
Tools
Tags
National Alliance for Health Information Technology
College of Healthcare Information Management Executives
american hospital association
IT implementation times
Healthcare Information Management
Chief Information Officers
Capital Projects

Sure, hospitals have been taking it on the chin financially over the last several months. They've been forced to respond in lots of ways, including laying off workers, instituting hiring freezes, delaying capital projects and cutting budgets, while an unfortunate few have been forced to file for bankruptcy or put themselves up for sale.

Still, despite all of these stresses, it seems that most hospitals are determined to go ahead with critical IT projects like EMRs, computerized provider order entry systems and medication management platforms, according to a new study by the American Hospital Association, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and the National Alliance for Health Information Technology.

The study, which surveyed 144 chief information officers and 27 chief financial offices and VPs of finance at hospitals, found that 55 percent of CFOs/VPs Finance are seeing some difficulty in accessing capital, and expect to keep wrestling with this for 12 to 24 months. This has meant delays in completing new facilities or facility upgrades (74 percent), deferring investments in new IT gear (57 percent), and lengthening time frames for implementing health IT projects.

CFOs/VPs of finance are stretching out timeframes for application projects (63 percent) and reducing spending on outsourced IT services (34 percent). Meanwhile, a full 94 percent have cut IT budgets by delaying or reducing the list of new projects or extending implementation times for existing projects.

To learn more about IT investment:
- read the NAHIT/AHA/CHIME study (.pdf)

Related Articles:
Study: Hospital execs stress IT investment for coming years
PwC: Hospital IT can lower death rates
AHA: Economic troubles likely to slow IT investment

Click here to get the FierceHealthIT email newsletter for FREE!


Comments (2) | Post a comment

Comments

By John Shagoury, President Nuance Healthcare | Posted 11:45am | December 17, 2008

All healthcare facilities should ensure that they have evolved the way they document medical records well beyond traditional dictation and transcription; the cost savings is proven and significant. A recent study noted that 90 percent of patients want their doctors to be able to share data electronically with other practices or hospitals. By speech enabling the clinical documentation process, organizations have and can reduce the average time it takes to document a patient encounter (speeding the billing and reimbursement process), reduce the time it takes for a patient’s medical record to be available within the EMR, improve physician satisfaction with the documentation process, and save on traditional transcription by approximately $7,000 per doctor per year. CIOs and CFOs need to collaborate with their staff to understand how they can make strategic investments and operational changes to boost productivity and reduce costs, while maintaining patient care.

By nSynergy International | Posted 12:09am | January 15, 2009

With implementing a collaborative Document Management and electronic Form Management platform based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Healthcare enterprise eliminate the unnecessary duplication of documents and forms, reduce search times, prevent data entry errors, and see an immediate improvement in document management and collaboration.

For more information, please visit nsynergy.com.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

More information about formatting options

To combat spam, please enter the code in the image.