Modern Healthcare has released a study that reports Healthcare facilities will spend up to 23% on their budgets on business processing and IT services by 2011.  This increase is due to a behavioral change as the healthcare industry turns to IT to improve communications, transparency, patient flow and data management, a report from Gartner found.

“Healthcare has seen a fundamental shift in its way of perceiving IT,” said John Lovelock or Gartner. In 2005, only 8% of healthcare facilities were considered “early” adopters of technology but last year we saw that number jump to 33%.  This represents a monumental difference in how executives perceive the need for IT to drive care delivery and operations improvement.

According to Modern Healthcare’s Annual Outsourcing Survey, that perception shift has led more companies to turn to outsourcing their IT functions.

Hospitals are increasingly relying on IT Outsourcing to provide higher levels of service that help facilities comply with quality standards, especially as the healthcare environment opens to greater scrutiny by consumers and regulators.

IT Outsourcing is seen as the enabler to increased quality and meeting regulatory pressures, added Lovelock.  There is a move among healthcare facilities to outsource clinical IT needs, and as that grows, IT outsourcing partnerships play a larger role in quality at healthcare facilities.

To learn more about Digital Reach’s IT Outsourcing for Healthcare, click here.