Hospital/Health System IT Services
The visibility of the IT department in support of the healthcare organization’s overall strategic direction continues to increase as technology becomes more critical to the delivery of care and management of the organization. IT departments can no longer be figuratively “in the basement,” maintaining the status quo and simply reacting to requests for services, products, and information. IT is an integral part of day-to-day activities and the leader (both technically and strategically) for the myriad of IT initiatives that are planned, in process, and implemented. Expectations are high for IT department resources, expertise, and continuous investment in IT. Departments are also expected to maintain a stable, secure, and reliable technical environment for patients, providers, and employees.
ECG works to align your hospital IT department’s specific projects with the expectations and constraints of all stakeholders within the organization, including community physicians. Our services in this area include:
- Assessments of staffing, services, and technology.
- Project audits and quality assurance.
- Project management.
- Project management training and project management office (PMO) development.
- Help desk audit and performance improvement.
- Service level agreements, including design, implementation, and monitoring.
- Outsourcing analysis, vendor selection, and transition planning.
- Service, product, and technology pricing and cost allocation methodologies.
- Physician and nurse activity studies.
Selected Projects
Conducting an IT department assessment for a large (and growing) multispecialty group practice. Expand Minimize
Our client is an 85-physician multispecialty group practice with plans to increase its number of physicians, specialties, sites, and services dramatically over the next several years. ECG assisted the leadership in evaluating key considerations, including IT department staffing and skill levels as well as the IT department’s future staffing needs to accommodate implementing a new multispecialty facility, Ambulatory Surgery Center [ASC], and EHR. Additionally, we assessed the department’s strengths and weaknesses and considered the viability of outsourcing to further increase the chances of success. Ultimately, we reviewed the IT department and performed a study in which we benchmarked IT staff by function at five to seven comparable organizations. The study found that our client was overstaffed for its current functions, but would be appropriately staffed once it increased scope and complexity. We then provided an action plan to address core competencies and improve the IT function over a 2-year time frame.
Conducting a post-implementation physician and nursing study for a large, multi-specialty health system. Expand Minimize
ECG assisted this multi-specialty health system in numerous engagements as it transitioned from an existing IT platform to a new, integrated solution. In a follow-up to an earlier study, which was designed to identify waste in current processes, ECG observed and reported on activities of nurses, physicians, and other providers after the implementation of the new platform. The nursing study occurred at one particular hospital across two units that had been previously studied on the prior platform and then live on the new platform for a period of at least 6 months. Post-implementation data was compared to pre-implementation data. The study identified opportunities for our client to further streamline technology and operations, but also showed positive benefits from the implementation, such as an increase in total time spent in direct patient care versus administrative duties.
Conducting an anesthesia department IT review for a community teaching hospital. Expand Minimize
ECG assisted this large anesthesia department in evaluating the internal IT services. Services were considered against the objectives of stakeholders representing the department’s tripartite mission (education, clinical, and research), as well as department administration. In addition, we helped evaluate the internal services against readily available services supplied by other hospital IT entities. The result was a recommendation to restructure internal IT services, outsource non-core services to other hospital entities, and focus on providing value to departmental stakeholders.
