Outsourcing healthcare IT services has been growing at a fast pace over the past few years. Small hospitals and large physician practices may need to outsource the IT functions, in which case it would be a good idea to find experts who can offer excellent quality services. There are many experts who can offer you those quality services. You just need to make sure that you are working with the most experienced and skilled professionals.
The use of Information Technology has become a major requirement among hospitals and other healthcare entities with federal regulations and incentives. With it is the increased need for effective and efficient IT support. The effectiveness of the support team in efficiently addressing the difficulties which the healthcare facility may be experiencing can strongly influence their overall satisfaction with the IT vendor.
What to expect from your IT partner’s support team
When you are seeking the services of an IT service provider, it is also important to take note of the fact that you will be dealing with their support team frequently. If you have operational issues that you want addressed, or upgrades or changes you would like to have made, this is the team that you will need to work with. You can look at it as a customer care department. The IT service provider should provide you many benefits, so you should be able to expect quite a lot from their IT support team. Here is a look at some of the things to expect from your outsourced IT partner’s support team.
- Ease of access – In this case, ease of access to the IT support team means that you can get through to them whenever you are in need. If you have any issues with your IT infrastructure, software, general business information systems or even business applications like EHR, you should be able to access them directly and be able to get answers or get pointed to answers.
- Responsiveness – The speed with which the support team responds to your calls is also an aspect to consider. The IT support services should do everything they can to assure that the problem is satisfactorily resolved in a timely manner. Check your IT partner’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) for their responsiveness promises.
- Experience in healthcare IT related issues – Another element to look at is the expertise of the IT support team. Other than offering general customer care and support services, most of these professionals should have proven expertise in handling a wide range of healthcare IT related problems. They should be able to guide you through simple troubleshooting processes so that you can make sure that your system is running properly or bring in technical support to correct more complex issues.
- Professional customer care – Most importantly, the support team should be comprised of people who are trained in customer care, who listen to and understand what the caller is saying and be understood by the caller. Whenever an IT support team member picks up a call, they should be able to talk to you professionally and get to understand your issue or complaint before taking any further actions.
Netgain is a healthcare information technology provider helping physician practices & rural hospitals with private cloud-based solutions.
Image courtesy of: Stuart Miles/ Freedigitalphotos.net