The Hidden Cost of Outdated Hospital IT Infrastructure

Maintenance Costs

Many institutions are unaware of the high cost of maintaining legacy healthcare systems. Outdated IT infrastructure is typically less efficient, consumes higher resources, and is slower. A study by Mechanical Orchard found that institutions using legacy IT systems spend approximately 60-80% of their IT budget on simply maintaining them (Rachit Awasthi, 2023).

Hospital Tech-Debt

Occasionally, locking into a system that trades speed for compatibility can seem like an economic decision. However, with the development of EHRs, the introduction of AI tools, and an increasing need for mobile access, hospitals may find themselves in a situation where the cost of updating to newer systems is increasingly steep. This can compound over time and lead to avoidable problems.

Vendor Lock-In

As costs for necessary updates accrue, hospitals may find themselves in a dangerous situation, relying on outdated hardware and subjecting themselves to vendor lock-in. This brings the additional problem of being reliant on a small number of tech providers. If there is an end to service, increased costs, or a lapse in support, legacy IT systems will inevitably run into problems.

Disconnected Systems and Workflow Miscommunication

Fragmented data leads to what are known as “data silos.” This is stored data that stands essentially sealed from outside systems. When critical updates are made to a patient’s data in one department, for example, they may not be made in another. This can create miscommunications across departments and inefficiencies that cause unnecessary confusion.

Risks to Patient Safety and Decision Making

Data silos can lead to serious errors, particularly when it comes to a patient’s information. Should one department provide incomplete information to a doctor, there is a real risk of misdiagnosis or medication errors, as well as paralysis in decision-making when caregivers lack information.

Independent data systems are also vulnerable to breaches that can compromise a patient’s information. According to a recent MindIt Systems article (Sujoy Roy, 2025), 74% of hospitals using legacy IT infrastructure experienced at least one cybersecurity breach in that year. In the digital landscape, maintaining robust cybersecurity is crucial, as serious breaches can have long-lasting and unforeseen consequences.

Manual Healthcare Processes

In addition to administrative confusion and risks to patients, fragmentation can lead to the necessity of duplicated efforts across departments. These include employees required to enter the same information across different platforms, resulting in unnecessary labor duplication.

Time Consuming Tasks

Due to the necessary duplication created by the presence of “data silos,” staff labor is wasted on tasks that could be used more productively. Extra time spent on tasks such as data entry, faxing, and scanning can lead to burnout among staff and ultimately impact work quality. Such problems tend to be cumulative and go unnoticed until the problem has become systemic. Ensuring they are avoided by having up-to-date systems in place can mitigate this danger.

Human Error Risk

Another hospital IT cost that comes with legacy risks is the increased danger of human error. According to a study by Quality Magazine (Heikki Laurila, 2022), each step of data entry carries a minimum risk of 1% human error.

However, this risk compounds with each step of a process, meaning that critical data entry with several processes has an increased error rate. Spread across fragmented platforms, this risk is duplicated and further endangers data integrity. Reducing the risk of human error can be challenging, but automating processes can help mitigate it.

Administrative Overhead

Relying on outdated systems carries the burden of maintaining the hardware through a narrow set of specialists, dedicating valuable resources to maintaining its viability, and accounting for scheduling deficits caused by security breaches. All of this can affect overall administrative overhead, inflating budgets beyond necessity.

Unable to Support New Models

As hospitals increasingly rely on remote networking systems, such as telehealth, and incorporate AI tools into their data infrastructure, cloud storage becomes a common practice, making it critical for IT systems to keep pace with these changes. Contemporary systems often require complex hardware and software specifications that older systems cannot support. Without these, the problem of updating a system becomes compounded as more time passes.

Falling Behind

In addition to this technical debt lie very real economic consequences as well. The absence of an updated IT infrastructure can create problems that give competitors a definitive advantage over hospitals. Patients understand that behind long waits, staff confusion, and delayed care are faulty systems, and may reasonably look to other institutions when seeking care.

Expectations

Beyond the potential loss of a customer base is the failure to meet patients’ full expectations. If a health care provider is unable to scale operations to meet the needs of their patients, critical failures in care may occur and break the trust that people have when they walk through hospital doors.

Automation and Integration

Utilizing HITSM brings the benefits of automated data systems that align with best practices and industry standards. This mitigates the repetition of labor-intensive tasks that drain valuable time and resources, allowing staff to use their time elsewhere.

The uptime benefits of this can significantly improve patient care and translate to scalable operations. ITSM for hospitals likewise untangles confusion over data silos and system fragmentation, allowing healthcare providers access to up-to-date records and other necessary information.

Cloud Benefits

HITSM is not a single intervention solution – we provide ongoing support as hospitals transition to and continue to use implemented systems. With healthcare cloud migration and reliance on system integrity, HITSM can offer ongoing cybersecurity solutions and backup and recovery avenues as clients move forward.

Our cloud solutions for healthcare IT offer unrivaled accessibility to current data that can fundamentally improve a hospital’s ability to care for its patients. While implementation of systems may have high short-term costs, the long-term benefits of investing in modern systems more than justify their capital expenditure.

Cost-Saving

Implementing efficient IT environments is an investment, and while it can be significant on the front end, the long-term benefits ultimately are cost-saving. By implementing best practices, maintaining up-to-date performance of IT systems, and ensuring compliance with regulations, hospitals can achieve significant savings over time through modernization.