A newly published survey has found healthcare CIOs and other senior health IT leaders frustrated by the very large number of different information systems and platforms that they and their colleagues are having to manage and navigate these days. The survey was conducted by the Houston-based symplr, an enterprise healthcare operations, and it engaged 132 members of the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), to determine their views and perspectives on those issues.
The two organizations published a press release to announce the results of the “2022 Compass Survey of Health System CIOs,” with the results published in a report entitled “From Disparate to Dynamic: Opportunities and Challenges in U.S. Healthcare Operations.” According to the press release, published on Wednesday, Nov. 16, “The data revealed that nearly 60 percent of respondents use more than 50 point solutions to manage healthcare operations. This includes 35 percent of respondents who use 51-150 point solutions and over 24 percent of health system CIOs who use between 151-500 solutions for functions including workforce management, provider data management, contracting and spend (supply chain), facility access, quality, safety, and compliance. Eighty-four percent of health system CIOs believe there is an opportunity to streamline and automate healthcare operations solutions to combat financial pressure, burnout, and other challenges the healthcare industry faces. The 132 survey respondents were members of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), the professional organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs), chief medical information officers (CMIOs), chief nursing information officers (CNIOs), chief innovation officers (CIOs), chief digital officers (CDOs), and other senior healthcare IT leaders,” the press release noted.
Key survey findings include:
Ø 88 percent of CIO respondents agree with the statement “working with these disparate IT systems and applications complicates my job.”
Ø 84 percent of respondents said having a streamlined IT infrastructure is an important factor in their ability to retain clinicians.
Ø 40 percent said financial pressure is the top threat their organizations will face in 2023.
Ø 23.5 percent of CIO respondents said enabling their clinician workforce is their top priority when it comes to managing hospital and health system operations.
“The findings of the symplr Compass Survey correlate with what we are hearing from our customers. Technology will increasingly be leveraged to propel improvements in productivity and efficiency, driving down costs and supporting frontline workers in providing the best possible care,” Kristin Russel, Chief Marketing Officer of symplr, said in a statement contained n the press release. “Investment in healthcare operations with an emphasis on automation and interoperability is an important step toward adopting a human-centered approach to a technology infrastructure that produces better outcomes for all.”
The full report noted that, “As revealed in the symplr Compass Survey results, nearly 60 percent of health systems and hospitals use between 50 to 500 software solutions for healthcare operations, the administrative, non[1]clinical tasks that help run a hospital/health system. Of these, 44.7 percent of respondents invested in additional workforce/talent management solutions; 38.6 percent in additional compliance, quality, and safety solutions; and 24.2 percent in additional clinician scheduling solutions. In the symplr Compass Survey and as numerous industry resources reveal, another prominent pain point reaches beyond the technology infrastructure, to the human network that spans from the front lines to the back office — the doctors, nurses, clinicians, administrative staff, and everyone on staff working toward and dedicated to providing quality care to patients.”
One area of particular concern, the full report noted, is that “Some nursing areas continue to experience a mass exodus of skilled labor, with the national hospital turnover rate at 25.9 percent, as noted in a recent NSI staffing report. As revealed in the symplr Compass Survey, 44.7 percent of respondents invested in additional workforce/talent management solutions; while 38.6 percent invested in additional compliance, quality, and safety solutions; and 24.2 percent invested in additional clinician scheduling solutions. While these investments were considered key to meeting strategic objectives,” the report noted, “increasing the volume of siloed systems has resulted in increased disparity among systems and among staff, who must spend more time learning new tools and less time on patient care.”
