BLOG: Health care IT decision-making

Between increasingly picky payers and voracious electronic health record demands, your practice’s information technology department is becoming the beating heart of your practice, with zero tolerance for downtime, delays or false starts.

However, unlike your clinic, optical or ASC, your IT department is a cost center, not a profit center. As a result, you may delay hardware and software updates as you prioritize the budget for new clinic equipment that generates revenue, or shift budget dollars to salary increases to retain and attract the best employees. This can be short-sighted.

Corinne Z. Wohl

We are in the process of saying goodbye to our IT manager of more than 10 years. He is helping us transition to an outside company for IT support. During his tenure, he “became one” with our 11 in-house servers and 125 desktop PCs. Mike knew how to keep them running far longer than recommended. He knew the work-arounds that saved money and seemed able to predict when it was time to bite the bullet and spend the dollars needed for replacement equipment or software. There was some staff frustration as we prioritized certain upgrades and not others, but choices had to be made to be fiscally responsible.

Click here to read the full blog entry by Corinne Z. Wohl, MHSA, COE.