Hospital IT Investment Shoots Up

Struggling to keep up with the demands of Meaningful Use and ICD-10, hospitals are investing a disproportionate amount of money in health IT, according to a story appearing in Healthcare IT News.

It’s not that hospitals have been on an overall spending spree. Capital investment for medical equipment overall (including non-IT technology) dropped from 30.4 percent to 27 percent in 2013, while medical equipment costs fell from 44.5 percent to 13.8 percent, according to Advisory Board Company figures.

But capital spending per bed for IT grew 62 percent between 2010 and 2011, while total capital spending grew only 2.6 percent, according to Chantal Worzala, director of policy at the American Hospital Association, who spoke with the publication.

What makes these big-dollar investments particularly galling is that CIOs aren’t sure whether all of this IT spending is going to produce a return on investment, according to Healthcare IT News. According to a January 2013 survey by Beacon Partners of more than 200 hospital CIOs, only 40 percent of them measure ROI on EMRs implemened, and even less (36 percent) are confident that their ROI calculations are accurate.

That being said, many CIOs have taken the position that ROI is less important than “strategy enablement,” according to Jim Adams, executive director of research and insights at the Advisory Board Company, who spoke with the magazine.

One key purpose for making these investments is to make sure they have the right infrastructure in place to shift from fee-for-service to accountable care, Adams said. Added IT infrastructure is being  used to prepare to manage the greater financial risk hospitals will be facing under ACO-type models, he suggested.  And at least some of these dollars are being spent on EMR optimization which can help meet that goal.

Another major area of spending within health IT is data security, including mobile device management software to support BYOD, data loss prevention tools and encryption software, HIN reports.

We should know pretty soon whether hospitals made the right IT bets, as the forces pushing them to spend are cresting. But if they find that they need to rethink their strategy, let’s hope they didn’t bet the farm on what they have;  as my colleague John points out, there’s a myth floating around out there that the more expensive an EMR is, the better it is.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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