A new study announced last week at the HIMSS17 event concludes that demand for health IT staff continues to grow as employers expand their budgets. Not surprisingly, given this growth, the healthcare employers are having trouble recruiting enough IT staffers to meet their growing needs.
Results from the HIMSS Leadership and Workforce Survey reflect responses from 368 U.S. health IT leaders made between November 2016 and early January 2017. Fifty-six of respondents from vendors and consulting firms were in executive management, as compared with 41% of providers.
The survey concluded that the majority of health IT respondents have positions they’d like to fill, including 61% of health IT vendors/consultants and 43% of providers who responded. Only 32% of vendor/consultant organizations and 38% or providers said they were fully staffed, HIMSS said. We’ve seen this challenge from many of the healthcare IT companies which post their jobs on Healthcare IT Central.
Demand for IT recruits grew last year, as well. Researchers found that 61% of vendors/consultants responding and 42% of providers responding saw IT staffing increases over the past year, and that the majority of respondents in both groups expect to increase their IT staffing levels or at least hold them steady next year.
Of course, someone has to pay for these new team members. HIMSS researchers found that IT budgets were continuing to rise over time. Roughly nine out of ten vendors/consultants and 56% of providers said they expected to see increases in their IT budgets this year.
As often happens, however, vendors and consultants and providers seem to have different HIT priorities. While vendors seem to be addressing new technology issues, providers are still focused on how to manage their existing EMR infrastructure investments, HIMSS said.
That being said, the survey found, health IT stakeholders have many overlapping concerns, including privacy and security, population health, care coordination and improving the culture of care.
One of the key insights from this study – that vendors/consultants and providers have different views on the importance of enhancing existing EMRs – is borne out by another study released at the HIMSS event.
The study, which was backed by voice recognition software vendor Nuance Communications, found that providers are broadly interested in implementing new technologies that enhance their EMR, especially computer-assisted physician documentation, mobility and speech recognition tools.
However, when asked to be specific about which tools interested them, they were less enthusiastic, with 44% showing an interest in mobility tools, 38% computer-assisted physician documentation and 25% speech recognition. Documentation tools that enhanced existing functions were especially popular, with 54% of respondents expecting to see them support a reduction in denied claims, 52% improved performance under bundled payments, 38% reduced readmissions and 38% better physician time management which improves patient flow.
This survey also found that the most popular strategy for enhancing physician satisfaction with health IT tools was providing clinician training and education (chosen by 82%). Since their EMR is probably their biggest IT investment, my guess is that the training will focus there. And that suggests that EMRs are still the center of their universe, doesn’t it?
