Nearly one in two hospital CIOs plans to hire outside consultants to help them achieve meaningful use of electronic health records and manage other health IT initiatives, according to a survey by healthsystemCIO.
According to survey responses from healthsystemCIO's CIO Advisory Panel, 46% of hospital CIOs say they already have spent or plan to spend a "significant amount" of money to hire consultants. Meanwhile, 54% say they plan to leverage internal resources instead of hiring consultants.
Of the CIOs who intend to hire consultants, 62% say that their institutions lack the resources or expertise necessary to complete IT projects without outside assistance. Morevoer, 69% of hospital CIOs say they do not think they will have more difficulty securing funds to hire consultants than securing funds for software investment.
The survey also found that 58% of hospital CIOs believe that smaller organizations are at a disadvantage for qualifying for meaningful use incentives because of their limited ability to hire consultants (healthsystemCIO survey, 3/1).
About the Meaningful Use Navigator
Across the past several months, The Advisory Board Company’s Meaningful Use Navigator has helped a select group of hospitals prepare to receive roughly $90 million in meaningful use hospital incentive payments. One takeaway: even the most advanced organizations can get tripped up on preparing for Stage 1 and Stage 2.
