How Healthcare Organizations Can Strengthen IT Operations with a Blended Support Model

According to a HealthDay/Harris Poll, 35% of patients have noticed or been affected by healthcare staffing shortages at every level of health system operations. Most notably, this data suggests that the patient experience and ability to receive effective care are at risk as a result.

While workforce shortages often focus on clinicians, healthcare organizations continue to face significant challenges recruiting and retaining qualified health IT professionals. To combat significant shortages, IT staffing strategies must shift to remove operational barriers and improve patient care experiences. To do so, healthcare IT executives should evaluate current support models, gauging their capacity to withstand workload and budgetary pressures. During assessment, consider the following three steps for leveraging a blended support model that combines internal resources with strategically outsourced managed services:

Step 1: Acknowledge the importance of a blended health IT support framework.

While the term “outsourcing” tends to have a negative connotation, deploying a blended managed services model can curb significant workforce challenges. When relying solely on traditional staffing approaches, healthcare organizations may struggle to compete and innovate at the same rate as their competitors. With evolving technologies and hundreds of applications to maintain, local workforces may be unable to match a healthcare organization’s specific IT needs.

Additionally, increased competition for qualified talent can make it difficult to attract expert health IT resources. Healthcare IT teams face intense competition for skilled talent not only from other healthcare organizations, but also from big tech and alternative IT companies, all recruiting from the same limited talent pool. Industries outside of healthcare may be able to offer more competitive benefits to appeal to prospective staff, making it even more difficult to fill support gaps. These various workforce challenges can greatly impact IT hiring and recruiting processes, often leading to costly, long-term job vacancies.

Meanwhile, continued IT staffing shortages can significantly impact both support coverage and quality. As internal teams become stretched across support demands, strategic initiatives, and ongoing system maintenance, healthcare organizations often experience slower response times, delayed issue resolution, and reduced capacity for optimization efforts. These challenges can create frustration and dissatisfaction for clinicians, staff, and patients alike. While many factors contribute to these shortages, healthcare IT leaders have an opportunity to reduce administrative and technology-related burdens that affect daily operations. By incorporating a blended support model with strategically outsourced resources, healthcare organizations can secure skilled IT talent and boost both clinician and patient experiences.

Step 2: Identify areas where additional support is needed.

When seeking additional resources, healthcare organizations must be realistic about IT team capabilities to maximize both internal and external talent. First, assess your internal team’s capacity to balance priority initiatives alongside ongoing support responsibilities. To identify resource gaps and areas of risk, IT leaders should begin with a comprehensive current-state assessment of their technology environment and support structure.

This assessment should map applications, systems, and support responsibilities across the organization, providing clear visibility into resource allocation and workload distribution. Additionally, evaluate team members’ skill sets, areas of expertise, response times, and overall workload to identify limitations, knowledge gaps, and potential burnout risks. With a clear understanding of the current state, healthcare organizations can make informed decisions about where supplemental IT support can deliver the greatest value and best complement internal resources.

Managed services teams can support many areas of IT operations. Services can range from long-term support, temporary support, or specific project support, where needs will naturally ramp up or down. Some specific functions include:

1. Service Desk: With multi-tiered support, an outsourced service desk can encompass desktop and technical, EHR, and telehealth platform support and beyond, providing true issue resolution to elevate the end-user experience.
2. Application Management: For continuous system alignment, support resources span the entire EHR system lifecycle and ancillary applications — ranging from daily maintenance, troubleshooting, and ticket resolution, to upgrade support.
3. Legacy Support: Maintain patient care and business office processes during a system transition with daily support, vendor coordination, and monthly maintenance for retiring systems and applications.
4. Go-live Support: Successfully lead EHR implementations and new version upgrades with go-live call command center support, meeting the on-demand scale and expertise needs for fluctuating live event ticket and call volumes. Also, maximize new system adoption and user satisfaction with go-live at-the-elbow support, ensuring satisfied knowledgeable users for long-term EHR system ROI.

Step 3: Drive long-term organizational success through managed services.

As consumerization in healthcare expands, rising end-user expectations have also raised the bar for IT departments. When supplementing IT support, select a managed services partner who delivers qualified, reliable resources to drive long-term success. To do so, healthcare executive expectations of external resources should meet or exceed those of their internal team—tied to specific, measurable SLA thresholds. Supplemental resources should be able to be an extension of the internal IT department, to the point where end users cannot tell the difference between internal and external support quality.

To ensure an appropriate resource match, go beyond positive client testimonials and speak directly to client references at comparable healthcare organizations. This will allow executives to gain a true picture of a project’s success. Additionally, seek partnerships that can provide clinically consultative support analysts. These expert resources should understand healthcare workflows and deliver meaningful EHR knowledge transfer, guaranteeing continuity of IT support to providers and patient communities. A true partner must also successfully adapt to significant fluctuations in support needs, while still advancing SLA performance.

As the healthcare industry continues to evolve, selecting a trusted managed services partner is essential for rapidly pivoting support needs. In taking steps toward a blended support framework, partial IT outsourcing from Med Tech Solutions will cost-effectively complement internal IT team skills while ensuring high-quality end-user support across every stage of the care continuum.