Leading into HIMSS15, TEKsystems, a provider of IT staffing solutions, IT talent management expertise and IT services, highlights results that explore the current state of IT operations at healthcare organizations. The findings identify key objectives and challenges for healthcare IT teams, the skills most needed to meet those demands, as well as expectations for spending and confidence. The data is gleaned from information captured within TEKsystems’ 2013–2015 annual IT forecasts as reported by IT leaders (CIOs, IT VPs, IT directors, IT hiring managers) at healthcare organizations.
Key findings from the data include:
Expectations for IT Budget Growth Decrease in 2015; Yet Confidence Continues to Increase
Fifty-one percent of respondents expect their organization’s healthcare IT budget to increase in 2015, down from 68 percent that said the same entering 2014, and returning to levels seen entering 2013 (52 percent). Thirty-eight percent expect IT budgets to stay the same, a significant increase over 2014 (23 percent) and similar to levels of 2013 (41 percent).
Sixty-four percent are confident in their IT department’s ability to satisfy business demands in 2015, an increase over the 59 and 58 percent that felt confident heading into 2014 and 2013, respectively. Ten percent indicated they are unconfident in 2015, the same percentage as 2014 and down from 2013 (13 percent).
TEKsystems’ Take: Expectations for budget increases began to normalize last year. Following the ICD-10 extension by Congress, IT leaders felt less pressure to seek additional funding to meet those deadlines. Confidence has continued to grow even as budget increases have leveled out, now that organizations have core personnel in place or have developed other plans, such as outsourcing, to address workload concerns.
IT Support Aligns with Business Challenges; Focus Is on Improving Operations and Efficiency
Organizational Challenge
2014 Rank
2015 Rank (% of IT leaders)
Operational issues
2
1 (81%)
Risk management
1
2 (79%)
Revenue
3
3 (67%)
Workforce management
4
4 (59%)
Customer attraction, retention and satisfaction
5
5 (22%)
Over the last three years, operationally focused areas (e.g., improving efficiency, reducing costs, improving existing IT applications and infrastructure, and managing risk) have all been cited within the top five business objectives that most need IT support.
Business Objective
2015 Rank (% of IT leaders)
Improving efficiency
1 (49%)
Reducing costs
2 (42%)
Improving existing IT applications and infrastructure
3 (37%)
Managing risk
4 (34%)
Delivering operational results
5 (29%)
TEKsystems’ Take: Now that healthcare organizations have identified the biggest challenges facing them in 2015, they are working to align IT support priorities to address those challenges. They have laid the foundations for their large IT initiatives and must shift focus to ensure that they are implementing new projects and establishing best practices in a way that allows them to make the most of existing investments. Increasing efficiency and making the most of these implementations will better position them to take on other projects in the future.
Most Impactful Technology Trends Include Business Intelligence (BI) / Big Data, Security, Mobility, Consumerization and Cloud; Expected Spending Increases Mirror These Areas
Over the last two years, healthcare IT leaders listed BI/Big Data, security, mobility and consumerization of IT/BYOD as the top four trends impacting their organizations.
Area of Impact
2014 Rank
2015 Rank (% of IT leaders)
BI / Big Data
4
1 (61%)
Security
3
2 (54%)
Mobility
1
3 (42%)
Consumerization of IT / BYOD
2
4 (38%)
Cloud
6
5 (31%)
The majority of healthcare IT leaders expect to see spending increases in security (70 percent), mobility (61 percent), BI/Big Data (60 percent) and cloud (55 percent).
TEKsystems’ Take: These expectations for spending increases make sense considering that security, mobility, BI/Big Data and cloud are all cited as the most impactful areas and tend to have some interdependencies. These areas play a large part in how healthcare organizations can increase operational efficiency and risk management.
Hands-on Roles Still Most Critical For Success, Also Most Difficult to Fill with Exceptional Talent
“Doers” continue to be cited as the most critical positions for an organization to achieve success. In 2014 and 2015, project managers, help desk / technical support and programmers and developers were cited within the top four roles most critical to enabling success.
Critical Role
2014 Rank
2015 Rank (% of IT leaders)
Project managers
2
1 (51%)
Help desk / Technical support
3
2 (47%)
Programmers / Developers
1
3 (45%)
IT managers
7
4 (40%)
Software engineers
6
5 (37%)
In terms of the most difficult roles to fill, project managers rank as the No. 1, climbing two spots up from No. 3 in 2014. Security (No. 2), programmers and developers (No. 3), software engineers (No. 4) and architects (No. 5) also ranked within the top five most difficult positions to fill. BI (ranked No. 11 in 2013) ranks as the sixth most difficult position to fill, down from No. 5 in 2014.
More than half of healthcare IT leaders expect salary increases for project managers (55 percent), software engineers (53 percent) and programmers and developers (52 percent). Approximately one-third (34 percent) expect increased salaries for help desk / technical support.
TEKsystems’ Take: It’s not surprising that project managers and programmers and developers remain in the top four most difficult positions to fill, as these staff members are in the trenches ensuring that organizations continue to make the most of their IT investments to increase ease of use and efficiency. This value translates into greater expectations for salary increases as organizations seek to retain their developed talent.
Vast Majority Expect Staff Salaries to Rise; More Than Two out of Five Expect Full-time and Contingent Hiring Increases
Seventy-three percent of healthcare IT leaders expect overall IT salaries to increase in 2015. The remaining 27 percent expect salaries to stay the same, with no respondents expecting salary decreases.
Forty-three percent of healthcare IT leaders expect hiring for full-time IT staff to increase, while 52 percent expect hiring to remain the same. Just 5 percent expect to see a decrease.
Forty-two percent of healthcare IT leaders expect hiring for contingent IT staff to increase, while 52 percent expect hiring to remain the same. Only 6 percent expect to see a decrease.
TEKsystems’ Take: As more work is done to make the most of investments in BI / Big Data, security, mobility and consumerization of IT / BYOD, organizations will need to at least maintain their full-time and contingent workforces in order to cultivate efficiency and make progress. While retaining top talent by increasing salaries will be a key tactic, new staff will need to be brought on as projects expand.
“Last year, we saw an early surge in the numbers of healthcare IT leaders expecting to see budget increases due to the overarching mandate to meet the former ICD-10 implementation deadline and to get new healthcare technology initiatives off the ground,” said Ryan Skains, executive director of TEKsystems Healthcare Services. “We are seeing those numbers level out as organizations not only make headway on the projects they have begun, but as they increasingly become confident in their staff’s expanding expertise and ability to meet major deadlines. Moving forward, the focus will be on refining systems and processes to increase efficiency and growth opportunity.”
Joe Petro is senior vice president of healthcare research and development, where he provides leadership for all of the research and development required to bring Nuance Healthcare products to market, including: Dragon Naturally Speaking, eScription, Dictaphone (Enterprise Express/iChart), Radiology Platform, Radiology Reporting & Decision Support, SpeechMagic, Critical Test Results Reporting and innovations such as cloud offerings, CLU, and CAPD. Prior to joining Nuance, Joe was SVP of product development at Eclipsys Corporation. While at Eclipsys, he also served on the executive staff and was a reporting officer, where he was responsible for the development of more than 30 products from ADT, departmental, inpatient, ancillaries, patient financial management and outpatient products. Petro received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from University of New Hampshire and a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Kettering, graduating both with Summa Cum Laude accolades.
Here he discusses Nuance, the evolution of technology in health IT, trends and changes, the patient response, meaningful use’s hamstringing and the biggest obstacles patients face.
Describe Nuance Communications and your role.
Nuance is the market leader in creating clinical understanding solutions that drive smart, efficient decisions across the health information technology industry. More than 500,000 clinicians and 10,000 healthcare facilities worldwide use our technology and solutions. Nuance clinical speech and understanding products are deeply embedded in EHR solutions, such as Cerner, Epic, Meditech, etc., enabling them to deliver innovations that provide a seamless user experience to their clinicians.
I’m the senior vice president of engineering, Research and Development, for Nuance’s healthcare division. I am responsible for the research and development of the entire Nuance Healthcare product portfolio. When not leading the engineering teams, I spend time with clients trying to understand how to improve existing products and devise brand new ideas that someday will become part of our extensive product portfolio.
How is Nuance changing healthcare today and in the future? Where do you see the company, and health IT going?
I think the health IT industry is approaching an inflection point where technology shifts from being viewed as a mandated requirement to more of a ”necessity that I must have in order to get my job done.” We are finally reaching a point where the cloud is enabling the kind of form-factor agnostic experience that we all thought made a lot of sense from the very beginning, but which was challenging to deliver because all of our “things” were not connected.
When it comes to tech adoption, particularly in healthcare, there needs to be a catalyst—we saw that with CMS regulations and meaningful use. Now, we are starting to see perspectives shift: Physicians are asking seemingly obvious questions like “Why can’t I access this data on my smart phone…?” or “Why can’t I do the same things on my phone as I can using the computer on wheels in the hospital?” This kind of shift is creating massive opportunities for a company like Nuance because the ability to get data into the mobile device (and easily access it) can be profoundly impacted by the technologies that we build. And sure there are plenty of challenges, but the industry is becoming more adroit and agile, creating solutions that serve the specific needs of the individual physician – and not just the technology to address government imposed regulations.
In this series, we are featuring some of the thousands of vendors who will be participating in the HIMSS15 conference and trade show. Through it, we hope to offer readers a closer look at some of the solution providers who will either be in attendance – with a booth showcasing and displaying key products and offerings – or that will have a presence of some kind at the show – key executives in attendance or presenting, for example.
Hopefully this series will give you a bit more useful information about the companies that help make this event, and the industry as a whole, so exciting.
Elevator pitch
Serving the healthcare and life sciences industry gives us a strong appreciation for the resource dedication and demanding processes that result in life-saving innovations. We understand that IT is critical in its function to accelerate research and development. That’s why we’re committed to simplifying IT and optimizing the entire enterprise. We provide customers with comprehensive technology and support solutions that help increase productivity while streamlining compliance readiness and improving communication throughout the care continuum. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that IT is improving patient care.
Founder’s story
As a pre-med student at age 19, Michael Dell founded PC’s Limited with $1,000 and a game changing vision for how technology should be designed, manufactured and sold. After just four years, Dell completed its initial public offering in 1988, raising $30 million and increasing market capitalization from $1,000 to $85 million. Dell’s commitment to the healthcare industry is exemplified by his ongoing efforts to improve the efficiency and quality of care today. Speaking at the Health Evolution Partners Leadership Summit in 2011, he encouraged healthcare organizations to expedite adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) and cloud computing to create new information-driven efficiency and care advantages. “Digitizing patient information and making it available in a secure and convenient way across our healthcare system are among the best opportunities we have to improve U.S. healthcare and create a better system for future generations of Americans,” Dell said. Dr. Cliff Bleustein, chief medical officer, supports the company’s strategic initiative to revolutionize the way healthcare is managed with patient-specific data that spans the entire continuum of care and leads to better outcomes. Dell Healthcare & Life Sciences’ focuses on improvement of quality, patient safety and efficiency starts at the intersection of information and technology.
Market opportunity
When healthcare is information-driven, data is interconnected and available when and where it is needed to save lives. Data becomes knowledge and moves healthcare beyond episodic care to preventative, precision medicine. And data ultimately allows patients to take control of their own health. Dell’s four-part information-driven healthcare approach is a reflection of our commitment and expertise:
What follows is a nice, yet concise, infographic developed by Clearwater Compliance — an organization that helps health systems ensure patient safety and improve the quality of care by safeguarding the confidentiality, integrity and availability of protected health information (PHI) – that provides a nice overview of the current state of healthcare breaches.
Clearwater Compliance states that according to Breach Level Index, there were 336 healthcare data breaches reported in the U.S. last year; “the Office for Civil Rights portal on the HHS website cited 165 breaches affecting 500 or more individuals in 2014.”
Interesting, the organization points out that non-digital breaches remain an issue. “Paper data breaches accounted for 9 percent of compromised records in the first half of 2014 – and a surprising 31 percent in the second half. In total, nearly 200,000 paper records were compromised last year, along with nearly 60,000 pieces of individually identifiable health information ranging from lab specimens to radiology film,” wrote the Clearwater Compliance team.
Additionally, insider mistakes and malice can be costly. In breaches examined, there were 45 incidents involving insider actions that resulted in the compromise of more than 478,000 records. “That means that about half of all the incidents we studied involved either mistakes or malice by an organization’s own employees and business associates.”
Clearwater Compliance makes the case that, despite an organization’s best efforts, “it’s almost impossible to eliminate all workforce-related data breaches. But organizations can take steps to foster an atmosphere of compliance and prevention.”
Lindy Benton, CEO of MEA|NEA, recently wrote in a piece for MultiBriefs: “According to the Wall Street Journal, Forrester Research recently conducted a survey of more than 2,100 healthcare IT pros and found that only about 60 percent of them said they encrypt devices like laptops, smartphones or tablets. Also according to the research, 39 percent of healthcare security incidents since 2005 have included a lost or stolen device.
“For some additional perspective, since federal reporting requirements started, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has tracked major breaches (those affecting 500 people or more) and has identified more than 945 incidents affecting patients’ personal information, affecting more than 30 million people.
“A majority of these breaches are tied to theft (17.4 million people), followed by data loss (7.2 million people), hacking (3.6 million) and unauthorized access of accounts (1.9 million people), according to The Washington Post. And these numbers do not even include the Community Health Systems numbers.
In this series, we are featuring some of the thousands of vendors who will be participating in the HIMSS15 conference and trade show. Through it, we hope to offer readers a closer look at some of the solution providers who will either be in attendance – with a booth showcasing and displaying key products and offerings – or that will have a presence of some kind at the show – key executives in attendance or presenting, for example.
Hopefully this series will give you a bit more useful information about the companies that help make this event, and the industry as a whole, so exciting.
Elevator Pitch
Apervita, the fastest-growing health analytics community, empowers health professionals from around the globe to collaboratively share expertise and content through evidence-based point-of-care analytics. Apervita is a secure, self-service platform that enables health professionals and enterprises to author, publish and subscribe to a market of evidence-based algorithms, quality and safety measures, pathways, and protocols, easily connecting them to data and workflow. Available to every health professional and powerful enough for the entire health enterprise, Apervita provides health analytics at a tenth of today’s cost, in a hundredth of the time.
About Statement
Apervita is the leading health analytics community, where together with health professionals from around the globe, Apervita is transforming the world’s health knowledge into thousands of point of care health analytics. Apervita is a secure self-service platform that enables any health professional to connect health data to a market of trusted algorithms, protocols, assessments, pathways and measures, published by leading authors.
Founder’s Story
Paul Magelli is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apervita, Inc. An accomplished entrepreneur, he brings together a pioneering vision for computable health with seasoned leadership and experience building global ecosystems. Paul brings together a broad range of leadership qualities, an acute focus on customers and a pioneering vision for digital health strategies.
Market opportunity
Apervita believes health researchers and practitioners have already created the greatest wealth of health knowledge that has ever existed and it is just waiting to be unleashed to improve health.
Today, the majority of this knowledge is paper-based or locked into proprietary systems. Apervita’s market is already unlocking them, turning them into computable and shareable analytics and putting them to work to improve health. They are addressing some of the biggest health challenges, such as the 100,000s of patients that die prematurely every year in the United States from chronic disease, complications and preventable adverse events.
CommonWell Health Alliance announces the addition of five new members enhancing the association’s nationwide footprint, share of the EHR marketplace and diversity across the care continuum. MEDITECH, Merge and Kareo join as contributing members while PointClickCare and Surgical Information Systems (SIS) join as general members.
With the addition of these new members, CommonWell membership now represents 70 percent of the acute care EHR market and 20 percent of the ambulatory care EHR market. CommonWell membership also represents market leaders in imaging, perinatal, laboratory, retail pharmacy, oncology, population health, post-acute care and others across the care continuum.
“We know it takes collective experience and dedication to break down barriers to nationwide data exchange, so we are especially pleased to welcome these industry innovators to the CommonWell family,” said Nick Knowlton, Vice President of Business Development at Brightree and CommonWell Membership Committee Chair. “Each organization will contribute to our effort by providing a commitment to action and new perspectives for additional use cases that will help us accelerate our current deployment of real-world interoperability services.”
• MEDITECH is one of CommonWell’s largest members to join since inception. It provides fully integrated technology solutions for hospitals, ambulatory care centers, physicians’ offices, long term care and behavioral health facilities, and home care organizations. MEDITECH’s membership increases CommonWell’s share of the acute care market from 50% to 70%.
• Merge is a leading provider of enterprise imaging, interoperability and clinical systems that seek to advance health care. It offers solutions in radiology, eye care, cardiology, orthopedics and clinical trials—all of which provide the opportunity for CommonWell to develop new use cases across a broader spectrum of the health care continuum. Additionally, Merge has the most complete radiology solution on the market, from small-volume sites up to the largest practices and chains in the country.
“Merge embraces the opportunity to join CommonWell at a critical moment in health care,” said Steve Tolle, Chief Strategy Officer at Merge Healthcare. “Industry leaders must actively come together to make interoperability real, and the Alliance provides an effective platform for meaningful dialogue and collaboration to help chart the future trajectory of the health care industry.”
• Kareo brings more than 30,000 providers and 60,000 users of its cloud-based medical office software suite into CommonWell. As CommonWell continues to deploy services nationwide, Kareo’s ambulatory experience and reach will accelerate universal provider access to critical health care data.
Guest post by Tom Giannulli, MD, MS, chief medical information officer, Kareo
Quality assurance (QA) in healthcare is exactly what the name implies — the process of implementing programs to improve and assure quality care for patients. In a hospital, these programs are often quite robust and monitored closely, but in a small practice, the picture can be quite different.
Smaller practices have limited resources and staff. There is already a huge burden to stay compliant in so many areas while keeping up changes to reimbursement and other programs like meaningful use. Often, there isn’t much time left over for QA.
Unfortunately, measuring and monitoring patient satisfaction and outcomes is becoming more important as reimbursement shifts to a more value-based model and patient expectations change. Whereas patients once stayed with the same doctor forever, now the majority would change providers for a wide range of reasons. While 80 percent of healthcare providers think that patients depart because of relocation or change in insurance, the reality is far different. Nearly 60 percent of patients switch physicians because of better service or treatment from a new provider.
For practices that are stretched for time, dollars and staff, technology can play a valuable role in improving the patient experience, compliance, and outcomes. Ultimately as the industry shifts to value-based reimbursement it can also help the practice improve revenue. Here’s how:
In this series, we are featuring some of the thousands of vendors who will be participating in the HIMSS15 conference and trade show. Through it, we hope to offer readers a closer look at some of the solution providers who will either be in attendance – with a booth showcasing and displaying key products and offerings – or that will have a presence of some kind at the show – key executives in attendance or presenting, for example.
Hopefully this series will give you a bit more useful information about the companies that help make this event, and the industry as a whole, so exciting.
Elevator Pitch
Tools4ever is focused on ensuring secure and compliant user and authorization management, which is often complicated within healthcare institutions because of the relatively high employee turnover and absenteeism. Deploying an automated identity administration solution that integrates with EHR systems will automate the user account lifecycle and help to resolve these problems. In addition, healthcare employees often need quick, but secure access to many different systems and applications. Tools4ever’s password management solution can help reduce many of the password issues clinicians’ experience.
About Statement
Tools4ever distinguishes itself through a no nonsense approach and a low total cost of ownership. In contrast to comparable identity management solutions, Tools4ever delivers a complete solution in just weeks rather than months or years. Thanks to this approach, Tools4ever is one the largest vendors in IAM with more than 5 million managed user accounts. Tools4ever delivers a variety of software products and integrated consultancy services covering identity management and access management, such as user provisioning, password management, and single sign-on (SSO).
Founder’s Story
Jacques Vriens established Tools4ever in 1999 and has expanded Tools4ever into a global software company. The initial focus was on tools for system administrators but building upon the knowledge and experience gathered in the early years, he quickly expanded the product portfolio into identity and access management.
Serving the healthcare and life sciences industry gives us a strong appreciation for the resource dedication and demanding processes that result in life-saving innovations. We understand that IT is critical in its function to accelerate research and development. That’s why we’re committed to simplifying IT and optimizing the entire enterprise. We provide customers with comprehensive technology and support solutions that help increase productivity while streamlining compliance readiness and improving communication throughout the care continuum. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that IT is improving patient care.
Apervita, the fastest-growing health analytics community, empowers health professionals from around the globe to collaboratively share expertise and content through evidence-based point-of-care analytics. Apervita is a secure, self-service platform that enables health professionals and enterprises to author, publish and subscribe to a market of evidence-based algorithms, quality and safety measures, pathways, and protocols, easily connecting them to data and workflow. Available to every health professional and powerful enough for the entire health enterprise, Apervita provides health analytics at a tenth of today’s cost, in a hundredth of the time.