Health IT, Hospitals

5 interesting findings from HIMSS leadership survey

As some hospitals expand IT budgets in 2014 so they can satisfy Meaningful Use compliance, […]

As some hospitals expand IT budgets in 2014 so they can satisfy Meaningful Use compliance, an annual survey by HIMSS looked at other IT priorities such as implementing ICD-10, security and challenges their IT departments face.

About 298 CIOs and other IT leaders participated in the survey.

Top healthcare IT staffing priorities are clinical application support (36 percent), network architecture support (29 percent), clinical informatics (21 percent) and IT security (20 percent). These job trends reflect the push by many hospitals to support multiple health IT systems and to add analytical tools to get a deeper assessment of patient populations, particularly patients with chronic conditions.  The security role shows that hospitals are sensitive to the need to have someone to ensure they protect patient data adequately. About 13 percent of respondents said they were adding 10 or more IT staff, a substantial change. About 22 percent said they would hire one and 14 percent are adding a couple.

Where can IT impact patient care? Physician-facing clinical systems to improve outcomes (37 percent) holds the greatest interest for respondents followed by patient safety (18 percent). One of the companies specializing in the area of patient safety and helping hospitals assess risk factors for adverse events is Pascal Metrics.

Increasingly complex and growing IT systems are the leading source of budget increases by hospital IT departments, according to 58 percent of respondents.  The regulatory changes driving the adoption of ICD-10 and Meaningful Use attestation require boosting staff numbers to implement those changes (39 percent).

Health IT vendors whose products can’t deliver has been one of the three biggest barriers to implementing IT systems. Although this barrier is improving from 15 percent last year to 13 percent this year, it continues to be an issue for IT departments. Lack of financial support (19 percent) and not enough staffing (18 percent) continue to present challenges for IT departments.

What are the top IT priorities? For the next two years achieving Meaningful Use is by far priority one, according to 25 percent of respondents. Finishing ICD-10 compliance has surged in importance for respondents and 16 percent said it was the top priority, nearly double what respondents said last year.

Some other interesting highlights in the survey were:

  • About 30 percent said they are providing patients secure online access to clinical patient information compared with 12 percent in 2012.
  • Twenty percent said physician systems, such as clinical decision support solutions, were their organizations’ primary clinical focus.
  • Seventy percent said meeting ICD-10 requirements was the No. 1 priority.
  • Nearly two-thirds said they participate in at least one regional health information exchange.

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