SOLUTION PROVIDER Q&A
Budgeting for Tech Investments— A Conversation with Susan Beaton
What does the overall landscape look like right now around health IT spending and budgeting, given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current reimbursement
landscape in U.S. healthcare? Prior to the pandemic, most health sys- tems had initiatives to pursue digital tools, implement applications that support mem- ber engagement across teams, improve the member experience through the implementa- tion of a “digital front door,” and reduce the cost of delivering care. The timeframe for accomplishing these initiatives will now be significantly compressed; what might have taken 10 years to accomplish will now take three years. To reduce expenses, healthcare organiza-
tions must thoroughly review opportunities to apply digital health tools to streamline clinical and administrative operations. To meet the needs of this new era, tomorrow’s digital health agenda must focus on three overarching areas: developing virtual care, coping with the financial impact of the pan- demic, and embracing the lessons learned from managing the crisis.
What are the most important elements that CIOs, CTOs, and other senior healthcare IT leaders will need to consider, as
they strategize moving forward? Before accelerating their digital initiatives, CIOs and CTOs must understand the stra- tegic business outcomes their organizations hope to realize through digital technologies and guide digital spend to best achieve those results. Organizations must distinguish between digital business optimization, which seeks to improve the enterprise’s current business model, and digital busi- ness transformation, which seeks to push the enterprise beyond its current business model. A digital strategy must account for both digital business optimization and digital business transformation objectives. When discussing digital strategies and ambitions, executive teams often suffer from
pitfalls such as siloed thinking, shortsighted analyses and a static perspective of the indus- try and digital priorities. The net result is an unclear digital strategy disconnected from the business outcomes the organization is trying to pursue.
Where are the biggest gaps in infrastructure development right now, and how do CIOs, CTOs, and other senior healthcare IT leaders need to judiciously
plan to address them? The pace of change for I&O will only increase in 2021-22 as IT leaders face pressure to quickly create, deploy, manage and govern dynamic application environments. In fact, more than half of tech leaders polled by IBM say their organizations’ digital transforma- tion efforts are lagging – and they’re looking for partners to help with managed services. Today’s I&O professionals must be willing
to move beyond legacy practices and mind- sets to embrace trends that will profoundly impact I&O teams. To deliver the experience today’s consumers demand, healthcare lead- ers must find the right partner who can help them achieve their digital ambitions.
Where are the opportunities for senior healthcare IT leaders in terms of investing wisely in order to make major computing capability gains
in the next few years? CFOs, CIOs, and CTOs can help their organizations decide on the right balance of outcomes to pursue from their digital business optimization initiatives and ensure that all digital spend contributes to those desired outcomes.
During strategic planning meetings and discussions on strategic initiatives, keep the most important outcomes at the center of considerations. Using cost differentiation as a lens for evaluating digital initiatives can help identify the most important areas for digi- tal improvement by highlighting initiatives that serve as points of differentiation. These points can include, for example, improving
Susan Beaton VP of Health Plan Strategy
Wellframe
customer experience through novel channels that competitors cannot pursue or collecting and analyzing proprietary data to improve revenue or decrease sales costs. Ultimately, these decisions can move the
organization from preservation to value creation.
What do the next few years
look like in this area? Today’s I&O customers have higher expecta- tions than ever, influenced heavily by their experience of consumer technology provided by digital giants. Functions once considered value-adds are now baseline expectations. Users expect seamless integration, immediate feedback and very high levels of availability. I&O leaders must seek tools that chal- lenge silos of visibility, and some vendors are already trying to solve these issues. However, these emerging tools are not able to answer every challenge posed by hybrid digital infrastructure management, so I&O leaders must carefully evaluate promised functionality and anticipate that their own teams may be forced to fill gaps by inte- grating tools and growing, not replacing, their baseline.
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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 |
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