Hospitals and health systems are looking to the world of tech as they move forward, a new survey from Ernst & Young shows.
The poll, which is part of EY’s Future of Health survey series, was conducted between January 31 and February 6, 2018. Via phone and online, 347 U.S.-based physicians and healthcare executives participated.
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The survey found 91 percent of respondents already have or are planning to undertake a tech adoption project in the next 12 months.
Why undertake such an initiative? They cited different reasons. Seventy percent said it was to improve the patient experience, 58 percent listed gaining better clinical outcomes and another 58 percent cited improving customer relationships. Additionally, 57 percent believe tech projects will boost medical staff satisfaction and 52 percent hope the initiatives will bring about a better financial performance for their business.
The survey also asked about tech efforts planned in the next year versus those undertaken in the past year.
The most commonly planned project involves analytics, with 50 percent of organizations noting they hope to tackle such an effort. However, only 43 percent of organizations said they’ve undertaken an analytics project in the past 12 months. On the flip side, 62 percent of executives said they took on staff satisfaction initiatives in the last year. But only 36 percent plan to work on such an effort in the next 12 months.
The other most accomplished projects include those focused on the patient experience (53 percent of organizations) and inpatient/outpatient improvement (53 percent). A few more most frequently planned initiatives revolve around capturing patient experience metrics (47 percent of respondents) and competitive benchmarking (46 percent).
The surveyed executives did report multiple barriers to success in tech-related endeavors. Forty-six percent said insufficient funding is an issue, and 35 percent listed fear of the unknown. Thirty-two percent pointed to privacy concerns, 29 percent noted a lack of internal expertise and 26 percent worry about poor internal business communications.
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