The use of consultants by companies to improve organizational and operational efficiencies is on the rise. According to Hospitals and Health Networks, healthcare consulting is the fastest growing segment, with upwards of 10% growth. The use of consultants by companies to improve organizational and operational efficiencies is on the rise. According to Hospitals and Health Networks, healthcare consulting is the fastest growing segment, with upwards of 10% growth.
Though healthcare consultants have been around as long as the oldest healthcare practices, government mandates and increased reliance on technology has led to an increase in the need for specialists like healthcare consultants.
Netgain has worked with dozens of healthcare consultants in just about every facet of clinical IT. By combining our unique strengths, we advance healthcare IT together.
In a recent post, we discussed why healthcare consultants choose to partner with Netgain. Today, we’ll focus on how healthcare consultants are partnering with Netgain.
HOW HEALTHCARE CONSULTANTS PARTNER WITH NETGAIN
Healthcare consultants typically become aware of Netgain in a variety of ways. For some, we meet through a shared client, others have heard of Netgain through their network of consultants, and yet others meet us at healthcare industry tradeshows like HIMSS, AAOE or MGMA.
No matter how consultants encounter Netgain, there are often a few common ways that they engage us to help their client.
1. Strategic roadmapping
Sometimes technology can be so overwhelming that practices lose sight of the strategic plan. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with putting out fires and managing day-to-day operations.
Consultants often come to Netgain to help their healthcare clients construct a strategic IT roadmap. Creating this roadmap helps practices understand what IT is currently in place, identify their current IT gaps, and determine what technologies they should be thinking about in the next 18-36 months.
More importantly, creating a strategic IT roadmap helps ensure the IT department’s goals are aligned with the overall practice’s goals. Having a coherent vision between departments and the practice as a whole will result in better workflow, happier employees and a more successful business.
2. IT triage
When healthcare consultants are brought in to triage practice operations, Netgain is often called on to be one of the partners who evaluates IT, specifically.
“One particular practice I was working with was in despair – financially, operationally, everything,” said Candy Simerson, Principal Consultant with iCandy Consulting. “Netgain came in and quickly evaluated their IT environment and made recommendations that brought stability to their platform and brought productivity to their users.”
Planning for the right IT solution can take weeks, months and sometimes years. Netgain is able to quickly and effectively see the forest through the trees and implement solutions quickly.
3. Cloud computing
Any healthcare consultant will tell you that every engagement is different – and they’re right – it is! Depending on the conditions, consultants may use Netgain for secure, cloud computing services when their client’s practice has aging hardware, missing strategic IT vision or lacking the staff they need to execute a strategic IT plan. Netgain’s Azure Cloud is also often recommended when the client is suffering from system slowness and performance issues resulting in unhappy or unproductive users.
Healthcare consultants may come to Netgain if their clients are experiencing one or many of these IT pains, which are indicators that the cloud might be a beneficial solution for their practice. Along with the consultant, Netgain works with the client to determine the best path forward to deliver a stable, available, secure and scalable cloud solution.
4. Augmenting an IT team
Consultants typically evaluate current staff situations to identify whether areas are under-staffed, over-staffed or are not staffed with the correct people, based on their strengths.
When consultants find that IT departments are inadequately staffed, they come to Netgain. Whether they need a specialist in networking, infrastructure, virtualization, storage, security, clinical workflow or other areas of IT, they find that one of Netgain’s differentiators is its bench strength.
“When practices experience growth over time, their IT team or IT environment may not evolve as quickly. When they call me, the environment is often out of date by several years or has evolved past the capabilities of their existing IT staff,” Simerson says. “That’s when I get Netgain involved. They have the strength to simply fill the gaps or become the outsourced IT department the practice might need.”
Healthcare organizations choose their consultant based on a number of factors, including reputation, industry insights, quality control and turnover. The strength of a consultant or consulting firm is also evaluated by the depth and breadth of its network. Consultants who have a network of strong, knowledgeable industry leaders to tap into can be a real value-add for clients.