From the increasing up-keep of an EHR system to IT infrastructures that power the backbone of a health system, CIOs detail what areas of tech are the most costly for their health systems.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.
Linda Reed, RN. Vice President and CIO of St. Joseph's Health (Paterson, N.J.): The most expensive technology St. Joseph's Health has invested in to date is the Cerner EHR system we implemented a few years ago. We replaced all niche departmental systems along with the core acute care EMR as well as ambulatory, behavioral health and long-term care.
In terms of today's expensive technologies, besides EHR systems, I would say integrated enterprise resource planning would be one of the most expensive out there, depending on the vendor. Regardless, those systems can help to recoup significant costs across a health system if implemented effectively.
Darrell Bodnar. CIO of North County Healthcare (Whitefield, N.H.): I would have to say our electronic medical records.
Of course, it is not just the cost of the electronic medical record system itself, but everything that integrates, supports, and keeps it running and expanding.
When you take into consideration the real total cost of ownership of an EMR, there is probably nothing more impactful to our CapEx/OpEx budget from a technology perspective than our EMR.
The costs associated with hardware, infrastructure, licensing and maintenance are just the beginning.
Labor, integration, interoperability and service contracts are growing every day. There is never just an EMR, but all of the peripherals, modules and third-party partners should all fall under the umbrella.
Private and hybrid cloud costs are also continuing to grow and keeping pace with consumer demands and technologies that are advancing at a rate never seen before is very expensive. A vast majority of these technologies are in some way associated with our EMR.
Tom Barnett. Chief Information and Digital Officer of Baptist Memorial Health Care (Memphis, Tenn.): Our technology foundation, the aggregate collection of technologies that serve as the backbone of our health system as a whole, can easily eclipse even our electronic health record spend.
The vast and complicated technologies around security, networking, voice systems, servers, storage, backup and restore, clouds, etc. remains the largest area of spend for us.
Linda Stevenson. CIO of Fisher-Titus Medical Center (Norwalk, Ohio): For 2022, our most expensive was the automation and tracking of bed usage, which also provides hospital-wide communication to all areas to improve patient throughput.
The need for this was highlighted during our COVID surge, and unfortunately it is a huge investment for a rural hospital.
Brett Mello. CIO and Chief Information Security Officer of Kingman (Ariz.) Regional Medical Center: Security solutions and services in total reflect one of the most expensive areas of investment right now.