CDW: Healthcare sector to lead IT spending | Healthcare IT News

From Healthcare IT News

October 20, 2011 | Molly Merrill, Associate Editor

VERNON HILLS, ILL – In the midst of economic uncertainty, IT decision-makers in the healthcare industry report expected growth in overall IT budgets and hiring, according to the latest CDW IT Monitor.

While the latest wave of the CDW IT Monitor noted numerous fluctuations among sectors and industries surveyed, the comprehensive figures indicate that, on the whole, IT sentiment is holding steady. The Six Month Growth Outlook, which measures long-term anticipated investment, decreased one point from June, to 67, and was unchanged from one year ago.

[See also: Analysts forecast moderate growth for health IT]

“Despite ongoing economic uncertainties, the overall outlook remains relatively stable,” said Neal Campbell, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, CDW. “This shows that while IT decision-makers are evaluating and scrutinizing their investments, they are still spending, especially in areas such as software and security."

In the corporate sector, 22 percent of small business IT decision-makers predict budget increases in the next six months, gaining three percentage points from June. Additionally, small businesses anticipate more near term spending and are expecting to increase software investments by six percentage points and solutions investments by five percentage points over the next six months.

Leading the corporate sector, 66 percent of healthcare IT decision-makers anticipate budget increases in the next six months. Ninety-two percent expect to purchase hardware and software, while 66 percent foresee investments in solutions in the next six months. The healthcare industry also continues to see an uptick in hiring, up 24 percentage points since June.

[See also: Health IT No. 1 on list of top 10 'hot' careers]

Despite eight and 10 percentage point budget declines at the state and federal levels of government respectively, 29 percent of local government IT decision-makers foresee budget increases in the next six months, up seven percentage points from June. Local government is less bullish on long-term hardware and software spending, but expects to increase both one-month and six-month spending levels in IT solutions by four percentage points over June.

While six-month anticipated hardware spending dropped among medium and large-size businesses, 87 percent of medium and 90 percent of large-size businesses are still committed to hardware investments. On the software front, demand over the next six months slipped four percentage points for medium-size businesses to 84 percent, while investments at large-size businesses held steady at 91 percent.

Hardware and software investments over the next six months are expected to increase for state and federal government. According to the latest CDW IT Monitor, hardware investments at the state level will increase one percentage point to 84 percent and five percentage points at the federal level to 90 percent. The six-month outlook for software climbed five percentage points for government organizations at the state and federal levels, reaching 82 percent and 91 percent, respectively.

Investments in IT solutions remain a priority in both corporate and government; however, the weak budget outlooks did impact spending potential in the next six months. In the IT solutions category, security now tops the list of IT decision-makers' priorities. Fifty-nine percent of those IT decision-makers who are spending more on solutions this month will spend on security.

SaaS EHR Down Time vs. In House EHR Down Time

Posted: 09 Aug 2011 03:26 PM PDT on www.emrandehr.com

As part of my continuing series of posts about EHR Down time (see my previous Cost of EHR Down Time and Reasons Your EHR Will Go Down posts), I thought it would be interesting to look at how a SaaS EHR down time is different from an in house EHR down time.

I’ll use the list of reasons your EHR go down as my discussion points for how it’s different with a SaaS EHR versus an in house EHR. On each point, I’ll see if either approach has an advantage over the other.

Power Outage – Certainly a power outage will impact both types of EHR implementations. If your computer or router doesn’t have power, then it doesn’t matter where your EHR is hosted. However, many clinics use laptops which can run for quite a while without being plugged in. Plus, a small UPS for your network equipment is pretty cheap and easy to implement.

However, a good UPS for your own server will cost a bit more to implement. Plus, the UPS won’t likely last very long. Most UPS are there to give you enough time to power down your system properly or to handle a short power outage. Of course, in this case we’re talking about a small clinic implementation. I have done an EMR implementation where we had some nice UPS and even a backup generator. However, this is the exception.

Conclusion: Slight Advantage for the SaaS EHR

Hard Drive Failure – Certainly the failure of a hard drive in your desktop machine will affect both types of EHR install equally. So, that part is a wash. However, the hard drive failure on your local server is much more of an issue than a SaaS EHR vendor. At least, I’ve never heard of a hard drive failure causing an issue for any SaaS software vendor of any type. Both in house and SaaS EHR implementations can implement redundant hard drives, but SaaS EHR vendors have to implement redundant servers.

Conclusion: Advantage SaaS EHR

Power Supply Failure – This one is similar to the Hard Drive failure. I know a lot of EHR vendors that have their clinics buy an in house server that doesn’t have redundant power supplies. I can’t imagine a SaaS EHR vendor buying a server without redundant power supplies even if the redundancy is across servers.

Conclusion: Advantage SaaS EHR

Network Cable – Cables can get pulled out of switches just as easily as servers. So, I conclude that it will affect SaaS EHR and in house EHR the same.

Conclusion: Tie

Switch/Router – Loss of a switch/router will cause either a SaaS EHR or in house EHR to go down.

Conclusion: Tie

Motherboard Failure – An in house server only has one motherboard. If that motherboard fails, you better hope you have a great tech support contract to get a motherboard to you quickly (For example, Dell has a 4 hour support contract which is amazing, but pricey). Certainly a motherboard can fail for a SaaS EHR as well, but since they likely have multiple servers, they can just roll the users over to another server while they replace the motherboard.

Conclusion: Advantage SaaS EHR

EHR Software Issue – This is a hard one to analyze since a software issue like this could happen on either type of EHR install. It really has more to do with the EHR vendor’s development and testing process than it has to do with the way the EHR software is delivered.

You could argue that because the SaaS EHR is all hosted by he company, they will be able to see the issues you’re having first hand and will have tested on the hardware they have in place. A client server/in house EHR install could be on a variety of EHR systems that the EHR vendor didn’t know about and couldn’t test as they developed and deployed the system. So, I could see a slight benefit for the SaaS EHR system.

However, one disadvantage to the SaaS EHR system is that they are hosting it across dozens of servers and so when something goes wrong on a server it’s sometimes hard to figure out what’s going wrong since all the servers are the same. Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but we’ve all seen times when certain users of a service are down, but not others.

Conclusion: Maybe a slight advantage to SaaS EHR

Internet Outage – This one is the most clear cut benefit to an in house server. When your internet connection goes down, the in house server keeps plugging along no problem. Loss of your internet connection with a SaaS EHR is terrible. No doubt that’s often the greatest weakness of a SaaS EHR. Although, it can be partially mitigated with multiple internet connections (ie. wired internet and wireless broadband internet).

Conclusion: Advantage In House EHR

I have to admit that I didn’t realize going into this analysis that it was going to be a landslide for the SaaS EHR. Although, that’s quite clear from this analysis. When it comes to EHR down time, the SaaS EHR is much better. Unless, you live in an area where the internet connection is unreliable and slow. Then, you don’t really have much choice since SaaS EHR needs a reliable internet connection.

It’s also worth noting that this article only talks about how EHR down time relates to SaaS EHR versus in house EHR. There are certainly plenty of other arguments that could be made for and against either implementation method such as: speed, privacy, security, cost, etc.

New Look at HIE May Change MU

HDM Breaking News, December 9, 2010 from Health Data Management

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is seeking public comment on a call from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to rapidly revamp how health information is exchanged. In particular, ONC seeks comment on how a quick transition in HIE policies and technologies would affect Stage 2 meaningful use criteria.

The President's advisors recommend development and use of a "universal exchange language" to facilitate health data exchange while enhancing the privacy and security of health information (see story). This type of language breaks data into individual units of data accompanied by a "metadata tag" with instructions on how the data is to be used.

ONC has published a request for information with comments due by the end of business on January 17. Among other areas, the agency seeks comment on standards and processes to support metadata and tagged data elements, ways to rapidly develop and use the standards and processes, transition challenges, associated policy actions, and lessons learned in other industries using universal exchange languages.

--Joseph Goedert

Certified Health IT Product List

From the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

The Certified HIT Product List (CHPL) provides the authoritative, comprehensive listing of Complete EHRs and EHR Modules that have been tested and certified under the Temporary Certification Program maintained by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). Each Complete EHR and EHR Module listed below has been certified by an ONC-Authorized Testing and Certification Body (ONC-ATCB) and reported to ONC. Only the product versions that are included on the CHPL are certified under the ONC Temporary Certification Program. Please note that the CHPL is a “snapshot” of the current list of certified products. The CHPL is updated frequently as newly certified products are reported to ONC.

And now....THE LIST!!

HHS panel says ease 2011 meaningful use tests

By Mary Mosquera on GovernmentHealthit.com
Wednesday, February 17, 2010

A Health and Human Services advisory group today recommended the government abandon an “all or nothing” approach to its plan for offering doctors and hospitals financial incentives next year for getting electronic health record systems up and running.

In a meeting of HHS Health IT Policy Committee, members recommended the government relax some 2011 requirements for “meaningful use” of health IT in order to give providers more flexibility in qualifying for the plan in their first year of eligibility.

The Committee recommended providers be able to defer up to five proposed measures of meaningful use from 2011 to 2013. Six measures – including showing the ability to perform e-prescribing and providing patients an electronic copy of their heath records -- would remain fixed first year requirements.

Under the committee’s Feb. 17 proposal, providers would still have to meet 80 percent of the original meaningful use measures.

The shift would establish a common set of health IT functions among providers qualifying in the first year of eligibility while providing them options for ramping up for the new technology.

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