Healthcare IT Service Management is a critical set of strategies for establishing everything necessary to streamline IT within your healthcare setting. ITSM provides the framework necessary to provide IT services for healthcare professionals, their patients, and even their suppliers. The overarching purpose is to ensure that services remain accessible for those using them both internally and externally.
ITSM frameworks are beneficial to healthcare organizations as they can assist in creating a streamlined process that will improve efficiency, minimize costs, and provide better operational performance. Most importantly, ITSM can help improve patient care by improving access and relieving stress points, resulting in increased patient satisfaction.
What Is ITSM and How Does It Apply to Healthcare?
It is important to understand that ITSM is not specific to healthcare; numerous types of businesses utilize these policies, procedures, and processes for managing and supporting IT services designed to help employees and clients.
ITSM in healthcare, in turn, uses ITSM policies and procedures to streamline and improve the provision of healthcare services, like charting, healthcare records, and billing, for healthcare staff and patients alike. As healthcare organizations greatly depend on technology to manage patient records and keep track of supplies and medical equipment, maintaining that technology is a critical component of providing excellent care. That’s why ITSM is such a crucial asset for hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
Why Is ITSM So Important in Healthcare?
A lack of structured service management within healthcare IT can lead to several issues. First, the various IT systems within the facility may encounter communication difficulties, creating a lack of integration. Difficulties with the exchange of information can also lead to efficiency issues.
Ongoing issues can impede workflows, resulting in more errors. Security measures may also be missing without a proper IT framework in place, making it prone to cyberattacks. Additionally, if there is no automation in place for creating schedules, entering data, or reporting, productivity levels can decrease.
Types of ITSM Frameworks
There are several kinds of ITSM frameworks available. One of the most crucial is known as ITIL or the Information Technology Infrastructure Library. ITIL utilizes systematized solutions for managing costs, improving patient or client relationships, and providing a secure IT environment that allows for growth. ITIL in healthcare allows for service design, strategy, operations, and transition so that stakeholders are able to efficiently provide IT solutions.
COBIT, or Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology, is another framework that was originally designed for financial audits within IT environments. More recently, COBIT has been re-designed to focus on IT governance within healthcare for the sake of improving IT controls while also improving risk management. This provides guidance for healthcare facilities in implementing IT governance practices.
Cost-Reduction Through ITSM: Where the Savings Happen
An important goal of healthcare businesses is to utilize funds efficiently, saving money wherever possible. Healthcare ITSM is designed to do just that.
There are several ways ITSM helps to reduce costs:
- Incident Management Improvements – Improving the way a facility handles incident management allows for any IT issues that arise to be taken care of in a timely manner. Reducing the length of time focused on fixing the problem can prevent costly outages and reduce the resources needed to repair the issue.
- Reduced Downtime – ITSM also reduces the downtime that causes disturbances to operations at the healthcare facility. One of ITSM’s most important functions is to immediately identify any possible problems so that they can be resolved quickly.
- Change Management – Another key aspect of ITSM is change management, which focuses on ways to address any technological changes that occur, reducing disturbances, mitigating the risks that are associated with changes to the system’s functions, planning how to handle the changes, and then carrying out that plan. Change management is important to healthcare IT service management as it reduces the number of costly mistakes and prevents issues like faulty software rollouts.
- Asset Management – The role of asset management involves taking account of all IT assets, maintaining their lifecycle, ensuring that they meet compliance standards, optimizing the assets, minimizing costs, and recognizing any risks aligned with IT assets. With this aspect of ITSM comes better control of IT spending.
- Automation – Automation as a component of healthcare IT cost management can include the automation of tasks like creating service tickets, setting new passwords, and conducting diagnostic tests. As automated services take the burden off healthcare staff, they create a more efficient workflow, minimizing errors, reducing costs, and easing the need for employee hours.
- Self-Service – This component is another way to minimize costs as it allows its users to access the system at any time, increasing employee and patient satisfaction rates. It also takes additional stress off those in IT support as self-service IT can offer answers and solutions at any time of day or night, even when the support team is not available.
Enhancing Efficiency in Healthcare IT Operations
ITSM is an essential means of improving hospital IT efficiency, and it does so with several key measures:
- Streamlining Workflows – One key component of increasing efficiency is streamlining workflows, especially in administrative tasks like setting up schedules.
- EHRs – Another important efficiency component of an ITSM framework is Electronic Health Records (EHR). Easily managed electronic patient records ensure both healthcare providers and patients can access records quickly and without staff oversight.
- Maintenance – ITSM also supports processes in maintaining IT services, quickly detecting any potential issues to reduce disruptions to the system.
- Improved Service Delivery – ITSM can support enhanced service delivery, improving efficiency within every component of a healthcare facility’s IT framework. In addition, continuous improvements can foster room for growth.
- Communication and Collaboration – Improved, efficient communication and collaboration between administration, staff, and patients is made possible by offering secure message systems that allow a clear and secure line of communication. Clear communication can streamline workflows and result in fewer mistakes, leading to improved patient satisfaction.
- Increased Accessibility – ITSM provides support for safe and accessible services such as Telehealth, giving more people access to remote healthcare.
- Alignment of IT and Clinical Goals – Better alignment of IT and clinical goals includes ensuring that less downtime occurs, especially for patient-facing systems. Services that provide emergency care or critical care require consistent uptime so that continual access to services, such as EHR, monitors for patients, and special communication tools, are always available.
- Centralized Documentation and Knowledge Management – These aspects of IT management offer a simple way to access patient information and protocols for carrying out treatment. Accurate record-keeping and secure yet accessible storage ensure optimal care for patients.
ITSM frameworks for hospitals and other healthcare facilities ensure constant monitoring and continuous improvements so any issues within the system can quickly be identified, addressed, and resolved. For healthcare facilities that provide life-saving care, continuous management is an essential function to prevent downtime, which saves patient lives, improves patient experiences, and cuts incident mitigation and patient loss expenses.
Case Studies
St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center provides a recent case study involving a hospital that benefited from utilizing an IT management service. St. Mary’s had previously experienced significant downtime, including a slow EHR system and heightened cybersecurity risk. Once ITSM was implemented, it enhanced EHR system performance, minimized waiting times, and improved accessibility to patient data, improving patient experience.
A hypothetical situation of how IT service management services could enable smoother operations involves a healthcare organization that operates over 50 different hospitals around the United States. Due to the increasing size of the organization and the need to develop streamlined technological services for efficiency, the healthcare facility considered implementing ITSM.
The organization’s existing IT protocols were unable to handle even the most basic IT service needs and did not meet current ITIL best practices, including internal IT communications, support mobility, and digital standards. This negatively impacted the healthcare facility’s business operations. Building an IT service framework that provided smooth integrations with the current applications and tools was necessary to improve efficiency.
This healthcare organization prioritized IT service management and gained the ability to customize its IT systems to meet operational needs.
Best Practices for Implementing ITSM in Healthcare
Considering best practices and developing a strategic approach when implementing ITSM in healthcare can help leaders ensure success.
- Build Relationships and Communicate With Stakeholders – One important strategy is to develop relationships with stakeholders, including involving them in the process of setting up ITSM. It is also important to communicate with stakeholders regarding all the changes that the system brings about.
- Choosing the Right Framework and Tools – When implementing ITSM, it is critical to take the many needs of a healthcare organization into consideration, including patient care and safety, regulation compliance, and spending limits.
- Set Goals – The true goal of implementing an ITSM framework should be improving patient care and satisfaction. To achieve it, determine how ITSM can help the organization enhance the patient experience, minimize costs, and improve efficiency.
- Implement Security Measures – Protecting data is more important than ever before, since technological advancements can increase risks and entice hackers. Implementing proper cybersecurity protocols can help prevent data breaches that risk patient satisfaction and damage reputation.
- Provide Effective Training – Proper staff training is essential, ensuring that all IT staff and healthcare staff understand how to utilize tools, navigate workflows, and implement processes. Cultivate a cultural adoption strategy that involves stakeholders, also taking into account the needs of the healthcare facility and the needs of the IT staff.
- Start Small – Consider starting small with one or two functions, such as incident management or change management. Beginning small can help ensure the organization makes changes to establish a solid ITSM framework that can be maintained with minimal risk. Then, healthy ITSM can be scaled as needed to support growth.
Consider the Benefits of Healthcare ITSM for Your Healthcare Organization
ITSM offers healthcare organizations of any size some significant benefits. The right framework can identify and resolve potential issues, reducing wait time for IT response and resulting in more efficient operations. Patient care can significantly improve by implementing strategies like EHR systems to provide simple, secure access to medical records. Monitoring changes made, identifying potential risks, and guaranteeing that sensitive data is kept secure are also major benefits of implementing ITSM.
If you are interested in exploring healthcare IT service management for your healthcare organization, begin by evaluating your current IT processes. Then, consider the needs and goals of your facility to guide you in choosing an appropriate structured service management that will meet your needs. Learn more about how the right healthcare ITSM can support your organization with strategic IT planning: contact Healthcare ITSM today.
Resources:
- AXELOS. (2019). ITIL® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition. TSO (The Stationery Office). https://www.axelos.com/best-practice-solutions/itil
- ISACA. (2019). COBIT 2019 Framework: Governance and Management Objectives. ISACA. https://www.isaca.org/resources/cobit
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2023). Healthcare Cybersecurity Best Practices. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/healthcare-cybersecurity-best-practices.pdf
- Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. (n.d.). Electronic Health Records (EHR). HealthIT.gov. https://www.healthit.gov/topic/health-it-and-health-information-exchange-basics/electronic-health-records
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