News Feature | March 3, 2015

Government Mandates Complicating HIT

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

HIT Regulation

Healthcare executives believe government mandates are negatively impacting their industry, as well as affecting their HIT strategy.

Ninety-four percent of healthcare IT professionals surveyed by Peak 10 feel government mandates are adversely affecting IT strategy. The majority of those believe they don’t have the expertise to effectively comply with them.

Fierce Health IT reports government mandates place pressure on healthcare organizations to make non-revenue producing investments and to divert scarce resources away from innovation and new application development. Those polled worry about cutting costs and say many departments are already understaffed and underfunded.

Healthcare executives are overwhelmed by “pressures from government, budgets and keeping up with evolving requirements, coupled with the heightened demand for technology to support the patient experience,” said to Allen Skipper, chief commercial officer for Peak 10 in a press release.

“It's not enough for cloud and data center services providers to help customers maximize their IT assets,” said Skipper. “It's critical for these partners to continually engage in initiatives to better understand the needs of today's healthcare IT professionals now and in the future, driving innovation and enabling developments to further enhance patient care quality and safety.”

The study also found mobility, EHR, patient portals, and regulation are the critical technology topics that will make the greatest impact on healthcare IT environments.

While these mandates are overwhelming, it’s important to remember that results also indicated technology is a critical part of their strategy for business success and patient satisfaction. “Healthcare organizations need a smooth transition to electronic health record (EHR) systems,” said Christina Kyriazi, manager of market insights and analytics at Peak 10. “Technology is seen as the enabler to a better patient experience, giving patients more control over their personal information and healthcare history, therefore empowering them to trust their healthcare provider and to make more sound and well-informed decisions for themselves.”