Relevance Within The Health Care Industry
In a recent survey of health care CIOs and Information System (IS) directors, increasing patient safety and reducing medical errors was reported as among the top business issues. Two other key findings were that:
- two-thirds of respondents indicated that the number of FTEs in their IT department will increase in the next 12 months;
- and three-quarters of respondents indicated that their IT budgets would be increasing.
The most likely staffing needs reported by the health care executives are network and architecture support (HIMMS, 2005).
“The government and private insurers are beginning to pay hospitals more for higher quality care–and the only way to measure quality, and then improve it, is with more information technology. Hospital spending on such gear is expected to climb to $30.5 billion next year, from $25.8 billion in 2004, according to researcher Dorenfest Group” (Mullaney and Weintraub, 2005).
This fundamental change in health care (pay for performance) means that hospitals and other health care providers will need to develop, adapt and maintain all of the technology necessary to measure and improve on quality. Physicians have traditionally lagged behind in their use of technology (i.e., electronic patient records). Only 7% of physicians work for hospitals, and so the task of “wooing them is an extremely delicate task” (Mullaney and Weintraub, 2005).
Read more about this topic: Health Administration Informatics
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