Returning to the office after spending a few days at HIMSS18 last month, a colleague and I shared our thoughts with our team about what’s on the minds of CEOs, CIOs and others attending the annual health information and technology conference. Listening to IT leaders and others who work in the trenches at hospitals and health facilities across the nation, we learned that data and data security are top of mind for these executives.
CIOs and others are working to ensure that valuable health information is easily accessible by those who need it, like physicians and patients, while leveraging emerging technologies and managing a growing skills gap. As my team sees it, they must effectively address this to achieve their ultimate goal of improving the patient experience.
At HIMSS18, White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, in an unexpected appearance, joined CMM Administrator Seema Verma as she announced new initiatives for interoperability. Interoperability, as you may know, describes the extent to which systems and devices can exchange data, and interpret that shared data. For two systems to be interoperable, they must be able to exchange data and subsequently present that data in a way that it can be understood by a user.
Kushner told HIMSS attendees that the administration has a plan for making access to health records and interoperability a priority. “There is overwhelming consensus that America needs better access to patient data and interoperability now,” he said.
The timing is right. In its coverage of the event, Healthcare IT News reported that “achieving interoperability and ensuring access to health data will empower patients and reduce waste, fraud and abuse, while creating more interoperability to use AI, machine learning and Big Data will drive greater improvements in how we identify new diseases and treatments.”
How do we get there?
We’ve noted that CIOs across the country are facing a technology skills and talent gap, and that’s certainly true at the nation’s hospitals and health facilities where CIOs can’t find qualified resources to execute strategies they’re developing to leverage technology to manage and secure data. IT skills most in demand now include Data Analytics and Business Intelligence, Biotechnology and Healthcare IT and Cybersecurity. What’s more, roles that require these sought-after skills are among some of the more highly compensated and in demand not just in healthcare but across all industries. To further compound and complicate the situation, CIOs at hospitals, especially smaller facilities and those in rural areas, are often managing ever tightening budgets on top of talent and skills constraints.
To help these CIOs, Genesis10 provides workforce optimization which identifies and addresses critical capabilities gaps and either sources or develops talent, while factoring in key human capital variables such as: desired flex/staff ratio, resource mix and workforce diversity strategy. Our teams help to define, develop and deploy workforce solutions through a lifecycle approach, mapping the future, identifying potential gaps and acquiring and training to build the right blends of talent for both short- and long-term business and IT objectives.
Already, some hospital CIOs are taking creative approaches to their workforce strategy, capitalizing on location strategy and domestic outsourcing, as we reported in our last blog, Healthcare IT Leaders Use Location Strategy to Manage Technology Resources. Domestic outsourcing, or onshoring, is a talent alternative that meets business requirements for proximity, delivery speed, agility and compliance, providing an option when operating in a talent-constraint and budget-constraint environment. Genesis10 provides domestic outsourcing whereby our consultants work from Genesis10-operated, highly collaborative Delivery Centers to provide support services. Each Genesis10 Delivery Center is SSAE-18 Certified, providing heightened rigor in the controls and processes we use to support delivery of infrastructure, application development or IT modernization efforts.
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