Healthcare, IT, and COVID: Oh My!

How professional IT contractors can help healthcare management survive COVID-19 and prepare for what’s next

Healthcare facilities are experiencing the full force of the coronavirus pandemic. Their need for equipment, supplies, caregivers, and space changes so fast it’s dizzying. And there’s the patient info, purchasing, ordering, scheduling… It’s a crazy amount of data.

Healthcare administrators are tasked with taming this data tsunami to facilitate accurate, fact-based decision-making. This is a herculean task in the best of times. During this pandemic? It’s beyond overwhelming.

The ability to understand data, extract relevant information and insights, and present those data in a useful format is essential to weathering this storm. Business intelligence (BI) data gives you this capability; it shows you how your organization is really doing. Programs like Power BI and Tableau are designed for this work. However, these programs are simply tools. What counts is who uses them.

Enter the highly-skilled IT contractor

This professional is different than a tech consultant. Consultants are specialists who work project by project. Contracted tech professionals are experts who step in at the employee level and stay with you for the long haul.

Contracting IT professionals: The most bang for your tech budget buck

Why is contracting an IT professional preferable to hiring full-time when resources are at a premium and budgets are splitting at the seams? Because it’s smart business. Here are five reasons contracting tech professionals can help your healthcare facility right now.

1. Fast onboarding.

We’re in the middle of a healthcare crisis. You need people on the ground and ready to go, right now—not in 30, 60 or 90 days. Contracting IT experts brings highly skilled workers into your environment with little to no lag time. They could be with you next week.

2. They assimilate quickly and well.

Tech contractors bring not only high-level tech knowledge to your organization, but they also bring a high level of business acumen, including communication, negotiation, and interpersonal skills. These abilities allow them to blend in with your current employees quickly and easily, translating into immediate productivity.

3. They’re supported by a larger IT talent pool.

Although they’re working on-site with you, they have access to all the resources of their parent company. This network expands your IT knowledge pool exponentially.

4. It’s cost-effective.

Bringing on permanent, full-time employees is expensive. Contracting a professional significantly reduces costs and saves time. You also control the length of the contract, be it for one year or ten.

5. They have an elevated skill set.

Contracted tech professionals apply their expertise to a wide range of industries and situations, honing their problem-solving abilities as well as their ability to use software like Azure, Power BI, and Tableau. They know how to get the most out of their tools.

Back to business intelligence and the COVID-19 crisis

For healthcare facilities, preparing for or surviving this pandemic relies heavily on accessing business intelligence data quickly, accurately and in a form that can be comprehended at a glance; you don’t have time to grapple with unwieldy data sets and determine the best reporting method.

Power BI and Tableau make it easy to extract and use BI information. However, like everything else in this new coronavirus world, their original purpose is being flipped on its head. Healthcare professionals are tracking new metrics and data in larger quantities than ever before. Healthcare technology needs to be agile. Customizations and adaptations to data compilations, dashboards and reports have to happen—fast. And how does cloud computing software, such as Azure, come into play?

Can your current IT team do this? Do they have time?

These questions bring us back to knowing how to use BI tools.

IT professionals working as contractors depend on their elevated training and expertise to land long-term contracts with high-level clients. So, although they market themselves at the employee level, they bring special industry-level knowledge and skills. They are equipped to customize, adapt, pivot, and manipulate technology tools to get the results needed quickly and efficiently.

Stepping beyond COVID-19 and into the future

This pandemic isn’t going to last forever. When we get to the other side, your institution’s tech needs are going to be the same, but different. Will patient intake change? Will billing be different? Will you need a new way to track supplies? What will your cybersecurity look like? And studies show cloud computing is technology’s future. Is your IT ready for that?

You’ll still need BI data, but what that data will be and how you’ll use it may be completely different post-coronavirus.

Bringing in a contracting IT professional now can give your team the bandwidth to start preparing for that new reality while it stabilizes the current one. It’s an opportunity to incorporate a fresh perspective and top-notch know-how into your environment, thereby

fostering effective change and increasing responsiveness. It’s an effective, budget-friendly tactic to bolster your healthcare organization and keep it moving forward.

We’re going to get through this. Together.

Interested in using a contracting IT professional? Need more information on the process? We train and source IT experts throughout the U.S. We can help you find the right fit for your situation. Contact us today!