The Struggle to Hire in Healthcare IT Is Real: What Are Your Options?

The IT challenges of modern-day healthcare practices and clinics grows by the day. To state it simply, the struggle is real. IT departments attempt to keep up with constant cyber-attacks; employees work from home with a vast array of hardware, software, and network resources; and patients interact virtually with staff who may—or may not—understand the compliance risks as they focus on care rather than technology.

Many of these challenges were already in play prior to the pandemic. However, as healthcare organizations attempt to adapt to a new social norm, the timeline to implement these changes rapidly accelerated. All of this has created a perfect storm that requires much more IT expertise. Healthcare organizations find themselves challenged to hire and retain IT staff, employ individuals with the proper healthcare IT expertise, and keep their patients’ and practice’s data safe.

Healthcare organizations find themselves challenged to hire and retain IT staff, employ individuals with the proper healthcare IT expertise, and keep their patients’ and practice’s data safe.

There’s IT—and there’s healthcare IT

Prior to the pandemic, well-rounded IT professionals were already hard to come by. As organizations in all industries attempted to adapt to a cloud-based, remote, and digital business model, these hard-to-come-by professionals became scarce—and expensive.

Not to mention IT professionals that possess healthcare experience and expertise.

Let’s face it, as a heavily regulated sector that manages and interacts with sensitive personal information, the healthcare industry has unique challenges. That means it is of utmost importance to hire individuals who understand the compliance challenges of the industry. It is also challenging to hire IT staff that have experience and knowledge in all the needed areas of IT. Practices often find themselves needing to hire multiple individuals to address all their needs.

Healthcare IT capabilities run the gamut

While practices and clinics might have gotten by with a tech-savvy office manager or single IT manager to take care of setting up emails and managing hardware and software, today’s healthcare organization needs a full IT staff just to stay ahead.

While practices and clinics might have gotten by with a tech-savvy office manager or single IT manager to take care of setting up emails and managing hardware and software, today’s healthcare organization needs a full IT staff just to stay ahead.

Necessary positions include:

• A high-level IT director or chief information officer (CIO) to strategically plan and manage current and future IT requirements, new practice initiatives, and increasing budgets
• A security expert to implement and constantly manage proper security tools, train employees, and respond during a security event
• Network and database engineers to properly maintain a fast, secure network to reduce provider, staff, and patient frustration and provide a foundation for optimized patient care
• A well-staffed support department that keeps systems running at peak performance, onboards new employees quickly and efficiently, and allows providers and front office staff to stay productive.

To find and hire staff to meet all of those needs becomes not only expensive, but seemingly impossible.

Security is job one

Keeping patient data safe has always been a need for healthcare organizations. But over the last two years, the number of cyber-attacks against practices and clinics has increased exponentially. These attacks have become more sophisticated and often exploit user credentials, making it harder than ever to prevent. The standard tools used by healthcare organizations are no longer enough. It has become less of a question of whether an attack will happen and more of a question of what to do when it does happen.

IT teams must use sophisticated tools such as end point detection and response (EDR) tools, which have replaced legacy anti-virus and anti-malware applications. It’s also important that practices have the staff needed to respond quickly during an attack. When a cyber-attack does occur, time is of the essence. A quick response can mean the difference between an issue isolated and quarantined to one endpoint and a network-wide issue that can shut down the practice’s ability to deliver patient care. A quick response often requires a security operations center (SOC) that has individuals staffed during all hours of the day. Again, this presents the same challenge to healthcare organizations: to hire and retain enough qualified staff to meet this need is both costly and difficult.

How do small to mid-sized organizations overcome these IT challenges?

Healthcare IT pros are rare, expensive, and hard to find. And while every healthcare organization needs all of the skills listed, they don’t need all of them, all day, every day—nor can they afford that.

While every healthcare organization needs all of the skills listed, they don’t need all of them, all day, every day—nor can they afford that.

For many organizations, the most cost-effective approach is to outsource IT to gain the expertise and economies of scale by partnering with an IT managed service provider (MSP). This gives practices access to high-level IT professionals, such as a virtual CIO and network engineers, readily available support staff, and sophisticated security tools and services, backed by a fully staffed SOC.

All of this comes at a fraction of the cost of employing a fulltime IT staff to meet these needs, including the overhead that comes with hiring, managing and retaining full-time employees. Partnering with an IT MSP also provides a predictable IT budget.

Healthcare IT is different

However, when selecting an IT MSP to partner with, it’s important to note that not all IT providers are created equal. There are a lot of IT generalists out there, and for practices and clinics, it’s critical to partner with an IT provider that focuses solely on the healthcare sector. This is important because the IT and compliance challenges for healthcare organizations change quickly. An IT MSP that focuses on healthcare understands the issues and can provide the long-term strategy an organization needs based on their size, specialty, electronic medical record (EMR) and other hardware and software needs.

When it comes down to it, the goal of technology is to help deliver patient care in a way the makes life easier for both providers and patients. Clinics and practices across the U.S. have partnered with IT MSPs to achieve this goal. Is it time for yours to do the same?

Talk to us about our 100% healthcare-focused IT services. From strategic security services to day-to-day, 24/7 helpdesk support to long-term IT strategy, Med Tech Solutions can help.

Talk to us to find out how.