Many in IT face the question how can a healthcare organization improve its revenue cycle management while maintaining daily operations? Some debate if they should go all in with Managed IT Services for Healthcare or in-source/staff everything to support the needs. Each use case, the services they provide, or research conducted models what will be the best approach for CIOs. Strategy coverage for Healthcare IT typically revolves around security, data protection and billing/scheduling flexibility. This is only half of the conversation and global executives who realize this have mastered approach.
If you look at any coverage today you will see a deep focus on improving the financial bottom-line while reducing opex but not lose technical functionality. Wait, increase revenue but cut expenses and still make IT more efficient? Sounds like a purple unicorn…. but it’s not.
Steps to remove costs in your Healthcare IT organization
Nobody loves the idea of an IT Audit and to start with this might not be required outside of security evaluations. Reviewing these core areas within your organization is a first step to slay the purple unicorn of efficiency, cost reduction and technology propulsion
- Full Telecom Expense audit– Internet and WAN connections are the least glamours, most time consuming and frustrating part of any organization. Lack of standards, numerous commodity players. Unfortunately, in the world today, nothing happens without telecom. Your patients, customers, practioners, researchers, vendors etc. can’t communicate and share findings without connectivity. If the foundation on a house is weak or convoluted, all of the exciting SaaS tools, security and other tech to support the operation works at sub-par levels.
Pull together a qualified outside team to perform a Telecom Expense and Architecture Audit. For example, Macronet Services provides a free 40-hour audit of Contracts, Invoices, Architecture with suggested recommendations Healthcare Organizations can execute on. Typical result is 30% in monthly savings with increased tech posture.
Example – Healthcare Firm spends $75,000 Monthly
$75,000 Subtract– 30% Savings
$22,500 Monthly Savings
$270,000 Annual Savings
$810,000 3 Year Contractual Savings
This move alone, just provided you as the CIO the ability to re-invest OPEX back into SaaS licensing, Security, Staff etc. and provide reduction back to Finance.
- Connectivity & WAN – Utilize a telecom consultant such as Macronet Services to review your contracts, billing, bandwidth and depth of the network. Yes, we are a little bias here so even if you have your own telecom consulting service team, that’s fine but Healthcare organizations need a regular review of the network. Why? Similar to the full bullet point on a telecom audit, mistakes or improved tech option might exist, do not let your patients/customer suffer.
- Smaller medical offices sometimes overpay on local Cable Broadband services.
- Outdated contract terms
- Missed service discounts
- Requesting a refreshed/new connection to remote offices (every time it rains, our internet seems to have errors and the carrier can’t figure out why, sound familiar)
- VOIP/Contact Center
How many offices have legacy, outdated phone systems but the fear of swapping out new especially training users seems daunting?
- UCaaS – Unified Communications as a Service to integrate with medical or healthcare CRM, internal APIs plus anywhere connectivity. (Think, snowstorm, Covid, remote healthcare workers). If you have a legacy PBX system, many organizations are now lifting and shifting these phone numbers to a new cloud based pbx.
Check out why AI is a Game Changer for Contact Centers in this video
- Cloud/Hybrid Expense Management – It’s safe to say, that all Healthcare organizations have some form of cloud services in their posture, even if it’s only SaaS and the core is in your private Datacenter.
- SaaS Licensing – From O365 to Mobile Plans, you need to have a system in place to move, change, delete users and overlay that with usage. If you have 100 O365 licenses not in use for 90 days as “generic” mailboxes, that’s a shadow cost to the business. However, who
- Evaluation of your existing and future Hyperscalers model