- The Great Resignation is more of a Great Reshuffle.
- Hybrid and Remote Workforce – it’s here to stay.
- Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) emerges as a top cybersecurity priority.
- Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) shows ROI.
- The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) will usher in a new era of healthcare data and IT interoperability.
- ERP now matches EHR in strategic importance.
NASHVILLE, Tenn., May 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company, and 2022 #2 Best in KLAS: Overall IT Services Firm, today released its second quarter Healthcare IT Trends Report, underscoring six trends certain to drive health IT decision-making in 2022.
Pivot Point’s team of experts continually studies and identifies top trends in healthcare IT, sharing their insights and know-how with health IT leaders operating at a range of organizations from hospitals and health systems to provider networks and payers. For Q2 2022, top-of-mind trends include the myth of The Great Resignation to the importance of TEFCA and ERP.
Pivot Point Consulting’s Q2 2022 Healthcare IT Directions Report provides insights and recommendations to help leaders frame strategies, drive innovation and operate efficiently in an unpredictable, rapidly evolving environment.
The Great Resignation Myth
According to a March 2022 Harvard Business Review article, 47 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in 2021. The same HBR report analyzed 10-plus years of labor data that suggests the 2021 Great Resignation was a pendulum-swinging response to 2020, when far fewer employees quit their jobs than expected, likely due to the uncertainty of COVID. The workforce shifts are driven by many forces, including employees reshuffling – moving to similar roles in the same industry given new (remote) opportunities, wage competition and reconsideration, taking jobs that allow a (re)focus on the quality of life.
Now dubbed “The Great Reshuffle,” it is inter-related with another trend – the permanence of the hybrid and remote workforce now embedded across a range of industries, including healthcare.
- Analysis: The impact of the Great Reshuffle and a hybrid and remote workforce is widespread and healthcare leaders should recognize and be aware of both trends – which are likely to continue full force.
- Takeaway: Organizations should build staffing models, management and team culture that provides autonomy, accountability and advancement; prioritize staff development and satisfaction; and deploy consulting talent to manage across peaks in staffing demand.
Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) and Cybersecurity Threats
TPRM continues to be a top emerging risk for organizations of all sizes across all industries, with 81% of executives identifying TPRM as a priority going into 2022. This trend is only expected to continue as dependence on third parties grows and vendor relationships become more complex.
- Analysis: There is an uptick in demand for TPRM program implementation and managed services from all types of healthcare organizations. The reality is all organizations that rely on third parties for production operations are inherently susceptible to vendor risk exposure, regardless of their size. The lasting impact of a data breach or cybersecurity risk event caused by a third party can be extremely costly.
- Takeaway: Healthcare organizations should establish TPRM via a comprehensive info-security program and a focus on supply chain evaluation; recognize that a business is only as secure as its move vulnerable vendor partner; and conduct Application Rationalization and Decommissioning initiatives to also reduce risk.
Embrace Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)
The proof is in the numbers: 40% of health centers are using RPM; 70% have seen improvement in clinical outcomes including a 76% reduction in hospital readmissions; RPM program participants are experiencing 51% fewer on-call urgent visits, 47% fewer physician visits and 41% fewer phone calls directly related to patient care.
- Analysis: Healthcare organizations that implement and incorporate RMP into the standards and best practices for care delivery reduce costs, while increasing clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction and retention.
- Takeaway: To dive into RPM, healthcare leaders, CIOs and IT staff must address device sourcing, inventory management and loss prevention, as well as coding and reimbursement for device utilization, IT support needs, workflow changes (especially for chronic conditions and post-acute discharge management) and cultural shifts to instill clinical leadership’s trust in device data.
Preparing for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA)
At the start of 2022, The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), the organization at the helm of the nation’s health IT standards, published TEFCA to address the gaps in interoperability by implementing a nationally coordinated network of Qualified Health Information Networks (QHINs). To date, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) have traditionally focused on provider-to-provider data sharing and didn’t include such stakeholders as payers, individual consumers and public health.
- Analysis: TEFCA infrastructure will help providers access more clinical information, collaborate with health plans to provide resources to patients and comply with information-blocking regulations. By the end of 2022, we expect to see several QHINs become available for data exchange.
- Takeaway: Organizations should build-out technology infrastructure that can request, accept and store data provided by QHINS; address data hygiene to ease integration with a national data set; and skill-up tech staff, especially with the FHIR framework.
Strategic, Integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
There is an ever-increasing level of new implementation, replacement and general adoption of ERP solutions across healthcare, with the operative word being “integrated.” Healthcare organizations are seeing enhanced business insights that can result in actionable changes and positively impact the bottom line and overall satisfaction of staff and patients. A 2020 Guidehouse survey reported that 51% of providers are planning to implement or optimize their ERP system over the next few years.
- Analysis: The ERP system is as important as the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to the lifeblood of the healthcare enterprise. Integrated systems provide for a holistic, data-driven operational view and can improve decision making and planning. A single Software as a Service (SaaS) solution can unlock efficiencies, enabling professionals work to the top of their license and not be bogged down with disparate systems.
- Takeaway: As healthcare organizations embrace new, integrated ERP deployments, it’s crucial to shape a vision, create a strategic roadmap, as well as launch change management activities and communications plans, including answering the question for staff at all levels: Why are we doing this?
