Healthcare IT Staff Augmentation: Challenges and Solutions
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Healthcare IT Staff Augmentation: Benefits, Challenges & Solutions

January 15, 2025
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Table of Contents

    In the evolving healthcare landscape, cybersecurity threats and sensitive patient data breaches have raised serious concerns for the healthcare industry. Maintaining sensitive data effectively and staying updated with the latest technologies is essential for providing better care. 

    Healthcare organizations even face IT challenges such as compliance with regulations, tight budgets, and specialized skills for technology advancements. Here, healthcare IT staff augmentation emerges as a key solution.

    This strategic approach provides a cost-effective way to access specialized IT expertise when you need it.

    Do you want to know how?

    This blog dives deep into what is healthcare IT staff augmentation is, its benefits, IT challenges faced by healthcare providers, and how IT staff augmentation can resolve this. 

    What is Healthcare IT Staff Augmentation?

    Healthcare IT staff augmentation enables healthcare providers to outsource IT staff for a specific duration from third-party staff augmentation service providers. This allows healthcare teams to scale up or down IT teams quickly, access specialized IT skill specialists, reduce hiring costs, and more. 

    IT Challenges Faced by Healthcare Providers and How IT Staff Augmentation Can Help?

    Healthcare IT Staff Augmentation
    Healthcare IT Staff Augmentation

    With the changing healthcare requirements and cybersecurity challenges, outsourcing IT staff can be beneficial for several reasons as follows:

    Keeping up with Technological Advancements 

    Challenge: Healthcare technology is continuously evolving but implementing new technologies and getting an edge plays a key role in transforming healthcare delivery to achieve better results. 63% of healthcare providers rely on outdated technology as per the SOTI research, because most of them find it challenging to translate their intentions to align with technological advancements due to a lack of skilled implementation experts.

    Solution: By augmenting skilled IT staff with implementation expertise, healthcare providers can leverage the latest technologies like EHR (Electronic Health Record), CDSS (Clinical Decision Support Systems), AI-powered diagnostics, and telemedicine platforms to improve operational efficiency and patient care.  

    Increasing Cybersecurity Threats

    Challenge: As of 2024, healthcare providers worldwide experienced ransomware attacks in the past year according to Statista. Due to sensitive patient data, these organizations are the main target of cyber attackers. 

    Solution: Medical devices and data systems of healthcare providers need routine checks and strong encryptions to prevent data security breaches. By augmenting IT staff, healthcare organizations can ensure regular security checks to identify vulnerabilities and implement multi-factor authentication & role-based access control. 

    Failed Compliance Due to Increasing Industry Regulatory 

    Challenge: Healthcare regulations frequently change at federal, state, and local levels, imposing penalties on healthcare providers for non-compliance. Staying updated with the latest compliance is essential and requires extra time and deep knowledge of data maintenance from healthcare teams. 

    Solution: Augmenting IT staff with expertise in vast regulatory compliance can be valuable and minimize risks of non-compliance. This will enable healthcare organizations to execute regular audits and avoid costly fines. 

    Struggle in Data Exchange and Interoperability 

    Challenge: The sharing of sensitive patient data seamlessly among different systems of healthcare providers is still a challenge. This leads to operational inefficiency and hinders coordinated patient care as accessing required information becomes difficult. Around 37% of healthcare providers work with interoperability technology partners (according to a report by Snowflake) for seamless patient data sharing. 

    Solution: Augmenting IT staff enables seamless data exchange by implementing secure systems such as FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) for healthcare organizations. Additionally, IT experts’ capabilities ensure disparate systems can effectively communicate with each other as the 21st Century Cures Act mandates providers to adopt technologies that facilitate easier patient data exchange. 

    These are the key challenges faced by Healthcare providers and outsourcing IT staff can resolve them seamlessly.

    What Benefits Healthcare Providers Can Get by Augmenting IT Staff?

    By augmenting IT staff, Healthcare providers can get a range of benefits as follows:

    Bridging the IT Skill Gap

    When internal teams lack the expertise in implementing automation, secure patient data storage, cloud migration, or infrastructure upgrades, IT staff augmentation gives access to specialized expertise to healthcare providers. These IT experts ensure the completion of the requirement by maintaining operational efficiency and sensitive data integrity. 

    Maximizing IT ROI

    Healthcare providers often face tight IT budget issues, making necessary system upgrades a challenge. This leads to delayed implementation, outdated systems, and operational inefficiency. Augmenting IT staff enables healthcare organizations to outsource IT experts for a specific duration or project without the need for a long-term commitment like full-time employees. This approach enables healthcare organizations to boost ROI in IT investment, leading to operational efficiencies and improved patient care. 

    Avoid Lengthy Recruitment Process

    Healthcare organizations have a fluctuating demand for IT specialists. Outsourcing IT specialists provides the flexibility of scaling up and down to healthcare providers and gives quick access to IT staff. This approach eliminates the efforts, time, and expenses related to the recruitment process for full-time IT experts. Augmenting IT staff gives agility to adapt to changing needs and maintain operational efficiency. 

    Stats and Trends in IT Staff Augmentation in the Healthcare Industry

    Extreme Networks and HIMSS research found the following stats related to healthcare IT challenges:

    • 65% of healthcare providers discovered IT staffing shortages lead to delays in important IT projects in healthcare. 
    • 47% of healthcare providers included the IT staff shortage challenges in the top 3 concerns.
    • More than one-fourth of healthcare experts planning to invest in network infrastructure. 
    • 59% of healthcare providers ranked cybersecurity challenges in their top three concerns. 
    • 66% of them said routine IT tasks take longer than usual due to a lack of IT staff.
    • 55% of healthcare professionals reported that resolution time to solve IT errors and issues has increased.

    These trends show the requirement of skilled IT staff and augmenting IT staff can resolve issues of cybersecurity challenges and skilled IT experts. 

    Healthcare IT Staff Augmentation
    Healthcare IT Staff Augmentation

    Conclusion

    With the rapidly evolving healthcare industry, it is essential for healthcare providers to protect patient-sensitive data while maintaining operational efficiency. By augmenting IT staff, healthcare providers can implement the latest technology and ensure compliance with changing industry regulations. 

    Eliminate the long hiring process and find a suitable healthcare IT expert by turning to Cyntexa’s IT staff augmentation services. We offer a range of technology experts who can serve for short-term and long-term to match your requirements. 

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