In my role, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with and learn from leaders in world-class healthcare organizations of all sizes, including CIOs, clinical leaders, and those at the forefront of healthcare operations. We’ve discussed innovation, challenges, and opportunities to help drive their future growth and achieve the best outcomes.
What’s clear across leaders and all types of healthcare organizations is it’s not getting any easier. We’re in a high-stress environment where the stakes just keep rising. But as we look to the year ahead, there are key insights to learn from each other to forge a stronger path forward.
Here are three thoughts based on the top responses from our 2024 symplr Compass Survey:
A tangle of priorities
With the increasing pressures from cybersecurity threats, staff shortages, and financial constraints, organizations are forced to adapt quickly. Where previously, leaders aligned on workforce topics ─ staffing shortages and clinical burnout ─ as the top organizational threat in 2023, things are shifting, and our new data reveals a widening gap between functional leaders. IT leaders’ top priority has pivoted to cybersecurity. And it’s easy to know why. Meanwhile, clinicians and operational leaders remain focused on the challenge of staffing.
The Healthcare IT Spending 2024: Innovation, Integration, and AI Report by Bain & Co and KLAS Research found that 60-70% of provider and payer organizations were impacted by one major ransomware attack earlier this year. And, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that from 2018 to 2023, hacking-related breaches surged by 239%, and ransomware incidents shot up by 278%.
Although clinicians care about cybersecurity and privacy, too, it doesn’t necessarily affect them day-to-day. Their focus, rightly so, is more on patients and providing them with the best care – that is until a system goes down and they have no other choice but to resort to paper processes.
As priorities continually shift, it’s crucial for all parties to engage in open communication and collaboration. While each group and department has its own concerns and challenges, they are interconnected and require comprehensive strategies to ensure all facets of the organization can function optimally together.
Consolidation consensus
Our Compass Report found that the majority of IT leaders (80%) agree that consolidating healthcare operations can help increase efficiency and ease the administrative burden on healthcare workers. With IT leaders reporting at least 150 solutions to run healthcare operations alone, and nearly half (48%) finding no time to audit software, it becomes critically important to help our customers and the healthcare ecosystem reduce complexity.
Clinicians and operational leaders seem to agree. Most of those surveyed (82%) believe streamlining operational processes, workflows, and software is the best path forward to increase productivity and save time.
Wasted time
One significant issue that affects all three groups ─ clinicians, operational leaders, and IT ─ is the amount of time spent on administrative tasks that they feel could be automated and streamlined with the right technology. The promise is there. The Compass Survey showed lost time spikes with 85% of clinicians wasting more than an hour each day. With the shortages and shrinking number of physicians and nurses, their time is even more precious. Nurse turnover rates today average 18.4%, and the financial hit that comes with it—up to $5.8 million per hospital per year—is just unsustainable. I believe there’s a way forward, and that involves healthcare staff having the right tools at their fingertips, tools that actually work for them, not against them. We can talk about costs, but at the end of the day, it’s really about people. Having technology that simplifies and empowers rather than complicates is how to drive real change in healthcare settings.
Buying influence & the call for collaboration
We’ve reached a pivotal moment where clinicians are advocating for a greater role in software purchasing decisions, with a striking 72% expressing this sentiment. This is not just a call for influence but a bid for tools that align with the daily realities of providing care. At the same time, we understand the cautious stance of IT (60%) and operational leaders (51%), who are concerned about maintaining a streamlined and effective decision-making process. However, when only 57% of our clinicians believe that their current software is conducive to delivering the best care, it’s clear that a recalibration is needed.
By involving cross collaborative teams including clinical leaders in governance councils, health systems can foster a balanced approach that avoids layering technology onto inefficient processes. By bridging the gap between IT, operations, and clinical teams, organizations can identify and implement solutions that are not only innovative but also functional across the entire spectrum of care.
Pulling the right levers for change
To alleviate this pressure cooker situation, we must address the core breakdowns between people, processes, and technology. This means involving key stakeholders in decision-making, auditing and consolidating software, and finally, aligning priorities. It’s not an overnight fix, but it’s a step in the right direction.
The good news is that healthcare is ripe for transformation, and thanks to the symplr Compass Survey Report, conducted in partnership with the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, (CHIME), we now have a unique understanding of key leaders’ perspectives. This valuable insight allows us to take informed actions that address both internal and external pressures and find the wins for key stakeholders.
Your role in diffusing the pressure
The million-dollar question is, how do you create better healthcare operations? It boils down to bringing all these voices together, optimizing technology, and closing gaps towards a common goal. The end result is a better experience and superior outcomes that ultimately benefit your organization, workers, and patients for a stronger future.
