Forty percent of healthcare providers' IT budgets are growing, but only 25 percent of providers with growing budgets attribute the growth to electronic health records (EHR).
Providers are beginning to see ways to optimize the business for accountable care, adding analytics and care management, and moving away from massive enterprise EHR projects, according to a new IDC Health Insights report examining the results of the 2015–2016 Healthcare Provider Technology Spend Survey.
The survey specifically examines technology spending and planned technology spending by U.S. acute care hospitals with more than 200 beds. The results indicate that the healthcare industry is entering the "post-EHR/post–meaningful use era in healthcare IT," IDC reports, with hospitals responding to the survey "overwhelmingly reported confidence in their ability to manage meaningful use." Hospitals were less confident in their ability to manage healthcare reform requirements other than meaningful use, according to a statement released by the analyst firm.
According to Research Director Judy Hanover, "This report documents the movement by providers to the 3rd Platform, and across cloud, mobile and big data technologies, we saw providers making significant investment in 2015, with more planned for 2016."
Additional key findings from the new report include:
- Across all of the technologies examined in the survey, providers want more cloud and are leveraging mobile and analytics capabilities in the cloud. "While 50 percent of software spending growth is still directed toward on-premise investments, survey respondents reported that 18 percent of new software spend is going into software as a service (SaaS) and 24 percent is going into projects that leverage managed hosting by a third party," IDC reports.
- Comfort levels with cloud technology are growing. Across all hospitals, 30 percent of the respondents said they were comfortable with cloud in 2014, while an additional 41.5 percent of respondents said they were more comfortable with cloud in 2015 than they were in 2014. "Barriers to cloud adoption, primarily comfort levels with security and compliance, are clearly coming down," the report says.
- Across all hospitals, top reasons for budget growth included analytics, patient engagement, customer relationship management (CRM) and security.
- Security strategies are maturing. Cybersecurity is one of the new growth areas in the provider IT budget, and this growth is expected to continue in 2016. Threats are top of mind, but the increased availability of resources for IT security is allowing providers to begin to implement strategies to secure data and networks. "Top priorities included focusing on security in the cloud, monitoring the environment, and controlling shadow IT."
- Analytics spending continues to grow, and big data is here to stay. Analytics continues to be one of the fastest-growing segments of the provider IT budget in 2016 as it has been for several years. Ongoing investment in ACO, clinical, and quality will continue in 2016, but hot areas of new analytics investment reported also include provider and care team performance analytics, as well as analytics that examine referral patterns and other financial analytics areas.
IDC Health Insights assists health businesses and IT leaders, as well as the suppliers who serve them, in making more effective technology decisions by providing accurate, timely, and insightful fact-based research and consulting services. Its global research analyzes and advises on business and technology issues facing the payer, provider and life sciences industries.
