Health IT leaders are keeping improvements to measuring patient care quality top of mind in 2018, according to the sixth annual Health IT Industry Outlook Survey commissioned by Stoltenberg Consulting.
More than 300 healthcare leaders in practice management, project management, director and c-suite roles at various provider facilities — including health systems, standalone hospitals, physician practices and other ambulatory care facilities — took part in the survey at the 2018 Health Information and Management Systems Society conference in Las Vegas.
Here are five survey insights.
1. Forty percent of respondents rated measuring improvement in patient care quality as the top business objective for the year ahead, followed by identifying areas of cost reduction (32 percent).
2. Respondents (40 percent) also indicated they feel underprepared for the second year of the updated Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act rule, compared to 12 percent of respondents that said they are very prepared.
3. Since many healthcare organizations have already moved to an EHR, IT leaders are looking to outsource clinical application and implementation support (32 percent), followed by IT service desk (28 percent) and financial application or system support (15 percent).
4. The most significant challenges IT leaders expect to face this year are optimizing IT and EHR performance (32 percent) and overcoming IT staff shortages (31 percent).
5. The top three biggest health IT industry topics, according to respondents, are artificial intelligence (39 percent), cybersecurity (25 percent) and blockchain (20 percent).
More articles on health IT:
Registration employee at West Kendall Baptist Hospital misused patients' credit card information
Report: 94% of IT pros concerned about moving to the cloud — 4 survey insights
Healthcare — The only industry where insider threats outnumber external threats