Long-Term Care (LTC) communities need streamlined IT support and an IT infrastructure that can maintain functionality and compliance often across multiple facilities and locations. As a result, they’re turning away from a reliance on internal IT. Instead, they’re seeking partnerships with IT outsourcing vendors they can trust to take on the burden of Health Information Technology (HIT) without leaving them in the dark. We’ll explore the benefits of Managed IT Services for LTC HIT reliability & support that communities require to keep up with their industry and provide quality resident care.
Managed IT Services for HIT: 5 Benefits for Long-Term Care Providers
Outsourcing to a Managed IT Services Provider (MSP) allows long-term care facilities to leverage all the benefits of a full-staffed IT team without the cost of maintaining these resources in-house. By working with an MSP, skilled nursing facilities can build an IT roadmap and predictable technology budget to scale their operations and improve process efficiency (with minimal impact on the front-line workforce).
A better employee IT experience can equate to improved quality of resident care, enhanced workforce satisfaction, and increased employee retention over time. Facilities at the forefront of the industry transformation are leveraging IT for improvements like:
- Providing staff with the resident information they need and when
- Streamlining resident care documentation
- Safeguarding PHI and business data from security risks
- Automating resident care workflows and alerts
- Enabling caregivers with more flexibility around scheduling and client choice
- Ensuring the right candidates are hired for the right positions
- Tracking and rewarding high performers
- And more
We use our Framework for Successful IT to provide our clients with Managed IT Services for HIT that they can trust to keep up with their industry and protect their data. This framework covers all aspects of a complete IT approach by building a solution that covers each client’s unique needs around:
- IT Strategy
- IT Security
- IT Design
- IT Implementation
- IT Support
All components of the framework are required for success and cannot stand alone. The sections below explore a few ways a full-scope IT approach can help providers get the most out of their IT investment and deliver tech support their workforce can rely on to stay compliant and provide quality care.
1) Reliable Technology Infrastructure & Streamlined IT Management
If a long-term care provider’s technology is outdated, so is their approach to resident care. This is especially true when the provider has multiple facilities and a rotating staff who need a consistent and reliable technology experience to do their jobs and do them well. A capable IT outsourcing provider can help skilled nursing facilities clean up their IT environment, streamline IT management, and provide reliable uptime and availability even in emergency conditions.
2) Dependable Technology & IT Budget
Because the long-term care industry is significantly underfunded, providers are already working within budget restrictions that have traditionally placed IT investments at the bottom of the list. We’ve worked with communities whose staff are relying on a cobbled collection of outdated hardware and machines to do their jobs, with little to no IT support when things go wrong. The nature of their work is inherently stressful, add technology issues to the mix, and burnout, turnover, and unintentional compliance violations are soon to follow. Proper IT outsourcing can give long-term care providers peace of mind by proactively providing decision-makers with the knowledge of what IT initiatives are coming down the road and what they need to do to prepare.
3) Friendly & Immediate IT Support
When nursing staff lack access to true 24/7/365 IT support, they experience more frequent operational delays and mistakes that can negatively impact workplace safety and resident care quality.
Complete IT outsourcing provides long-term care communities with centralized, any-time tech support and high-quality IT services to help drive employee satisfaction and engagement across all locations. These benefits are key to paving the way for successful IT and the nursing staff’s smooth adoption of new technology.
We work with our clients to determine the best-fit technology for their unique needs and implement these improvements around their core business. We also provide standardized technology training and onboarding that helps our clients avoid technology adoption roadblocks and employee resistance to change.
4) Health Information Technology Expertise
When long-term care providers invest in a new IT initiative, costs extend well beyond the price of the technology itself. For the new solution to provide long-term value, it must serve its purpose effectively, often requiring regular updates, testing, and employee training before it is ready to be rolled out to the entire organization.
These “routine” but essential IT needs, which some long-term care providers decide to provide in-house, are not always easy to maintain. These routine tasks can multiply into mass-scale implementations across multiple locations for long-term care providers with multiple facilities.
For example:
- Supporting regular software updates for business-critical applications
- Enforcing new standards to maintain industry compliance & IT security best practices
- Providing training for a workforce with high turnover, limited time, and minimal technology experience
These “routine” tasks are often executed without a scalable strategy, and employee knowledge, resident care, and community compliance suffer. As a result, long-term care providers risk damaging customer trust and their community’s reputation.
5) Strategic IT Implementations
An experienced IT outsourcing provider will work with your leadership team to build a strategy that helps you achieve your vision for successful IT without disrupting the ebb and flow of your business. For reference, if you plan to implement a new EMR system, a strategic MSP can coordinate with key stakeholders, field staff, and all other relevant business units to ensure the full scope of the initiative’s potential impact is accounted for during implementation. This is especially critical when the technology or process is used by nursing staff who provide dependable, 24-hour care and need reliable technology and support to do so.
We’ve worked with long-term care providers to help them accomplish their business technology goals, from introducing a new EMR system to standardizing and cleaning up the technology for a newly acquired facility. This experience has earned our team the industry insight and HIT expertise they need to help our clients successfully make the most of their IT investments.
If you’re looking for a provider who can both support and optimize your IT experience, schedule some time with a member from our team to learn more about our Complete IT Outsourcing and Managed IT Services.