3 Ways Cloud-Based EHR Deployment Elevates Healthcare Organizations
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Healthcare data is increasingly moving to the cloud, with nearly three-quarters of healthcare organizations (HCOs) using cloud services in 2023. This shift in strategy requires specialized IT support to manage, secure, and optimize cloud environments. Working with an experienced IT services partner, HCOs can address current needs, build capabilities for the future, and ensure that critical data is always secure and accessible.
Are you considering a shift in your cloud strategy, or planning to increase your cloud footprint? An experienced managed services partner can help address these seven key challenges:
HCOs are struggling to keep up with the rapidly advancing technology required to securely handle patient data. Data breaches pose a significant threat to HCOs, with medical records being high-value targets for criminal extortion. In fact, a recent report from Gartner found that at least 70% of all HCO ransomware attacks involve data-extortion attempts.
Protecting valuable healthcare data and complying with evolving regulations require increasingly complex technologies. Meeting these requirements is beyond the capacity of most hospital IT departments. Data breaches—even minor ones—must be reported, often resulting in costly fines, time-consuming data recovery efforts, and a negative impact on a hospital’s reputation.
Cloud hosting companies can protect hospitals against hacking threats and data breaches with dedicated, expert support that doesn’t strain everyday IT operations.
While cloud adoption continues to accelerate, a significant number of HCOs still use physical data centers. These on-premises data centers often occupy less-than-ideal, retrofitted space within the hospital, resulting in such challenges as keeping the data center safe from water or fire, ensuring effective ventilation, controlling for electrical capacity, and maintaining adequate telecommunications. They are also often competing with clinical spaces for square footage.
Using managed services in the cloud has several advantages for organizations using on-premises data centers:
Building and maintaining on-premises data center infrastructure is time-consuming and expensive. A midsized HCO allocates an average of $4 million to each iteration of its three- to five-year infrastructure refresh cycle.
Cloud-based managed services providers can help to avoid recurring capital expenditures and achieve economies of scale that are not otherwise possible—even for large hospital systems. This can result in significant cost savings that are already built into the contract.
Hospitals need flexible EHR platforms that can be customized and scaled to meet specific business needs, quickly and easily. However, the use of on-premises infrastructure can create barriers that prevent hospitals from taking full advantage of meaningful technologies that lead to innovation.
By adopting cloud hosting solutions, HCOs can enjoy greater flexibility and scalability. Managed services partners offer hybrid solutions that allow a cloud-first, but not a cloud-only, strategy. Data migration to and from the public cloud (for example, Amazon AWS, Google GCP, and Microsoft Azure) can happen in stages with minimal disruption to existing operations. Some data, such as legacy EHRs, can be moved permanently to the public cloud.
A cloud-based approach lets the hospital IT system capacity readily expand or contract, depending on business goals and needs. Instead of making large capital outlays for on-premises servers, the organization pays only for the capacity they need.
Today’s HCOs need innovative digital solutions to address big challenges. The cloud’s accessible, flexible environment encourages experimentation by making innovation less risky happening in the cloud, not in on-premises databases and software.
Employing managed services in the cloud supports experimentation and innovation with less financial risk or strain on everyday operations.
Recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining highly skilled IT experts can be challenging, especially in smaller cities and rural areas, but also in urban areas with highly competitive labor markets. When on-site IT employees are required to provide round-the-clock support, the potential result is burnout. Staff turnover is costly from a financial and operational standpoint. Gartner reports that IT executives identified talent availability as the biggest barrier to technology adoption.
As healthcare technology becomes more complex, a cloud-based management team can avert skill gaps by providing deep expertise and 24/7 IT coverage to augment your existing team. Long-term relationships with EHR providers and other vendors allow for proactive data monitoring and troubleshooting. By outsourcing IT support, you can provide a cost-effective solution to the challenge of recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining highly skilled IT experts, while ensuring uninterrupted and high-quality support.
Today’s sophisticated EHR platforms should elevate healthcare experiences, empowering providers, staff, and patients with better tools and more relevant information. To support positive user experiences, IT leaders must respond to feedback, adapt to change, and deploy innovation quickly.
A strong managed services partnership helps HCOs create better user experiences by supporting a resilient, responsive system that adapts to users’ needs.
Experienced cloud-based managed services providers can develop a customized strategy that leverages private cloud, public cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid solutions to move your hospital’s infrastructure forward. The right partner will customize solutions for the near and long term, ensuring that your data is protected from cyberattacks, continually backed up, and always available when your organization needs it.
HCOs that have adopted cloud-based managed services have benefited by:
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