Last week was the most important annual convention for health information technology, HIMSS 2018. The Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) provides a forum for thought leaders and a venue for innovative products.
The 2018 U.S. HIMSS Leadership and Workforce Survey provides some insights about the state of health IT today and where its efforts will be focused for the next 12 months. With input from 369 hospital/health system and vendor respondents, the survey revealed that privacy and security, process improvement and workflow as well as data analytics and business intelligence to inform clinical decision-making remain top of mind.
For a glimpse of the 2018 priorities of the HIMSS respondents, this chart shows the Top 10 concerns of hospital leaders and the correlating priorities of the vendors who serve them. While there tends to be agreement about the top 10 issues facing health IT today, vendors and their customers do not always have alignment about their relative importance.
TOP 10 HEALTH IT PRIORITIES FOR HOSPITALS AND VENDOR CORRELATION (click to enlarge)
A Saturation Point
One of the most telling discrepancies between hospital and vendor respondents was the fact that hospitals overwhelmingly either anticipated stagnation or reduction in hiring in 2018 while vendors are still showing aggressive hiring practices. Vendors may be responding to last year’s demand and this survey indicates a need for them to adjust their projections to align with their customers.
CURRENT WORKFORCE VACANCY (click to enlarge)
This trend may show a saturation point for hospitals regarding how much more change and expense they are currently willing to incur to play the expanding health information technology game to the level that the government, innovators and vendors would like to push them.
Willingness is only part of the equation. The next generation of health information products in development will move information and technology to further integration and greater utility for patients, providers and payers. This trend is a juggernaut that will take both hospital and vendors with it in the next few years. Guaranteed.
