HIMSS Leadership and Workforce survey reveals 5 key findings

PARCA eNEWS – Mar. 10, 2018 – HiMSS released its annual survey of healthcare leaders about information and technology concerns at its annual meeting, held in Las Vegas, March 5-9.

The annual study seeks to find out the top information and technology and informatics concerns of healthcare leaders from hospitals, ambulatory organizations and Long-term and Post-Acute Care facilities, as well as vendors and consultants. 

There were 369 respondents to the web survey conducted between November 2017 and mid-February 2018, 224 were healthcare providers and 145 were vendors or consultants.

Among the findings contained in the 30-page report were these top 5 findings:

1. Vendors, providers and consultants remain aligned on information and technology priorities with cybersecurity and data analytics emerging as the top two priorities. 
2. IT professionals within hospitals are assuming more influence on organizational planning. 
3. Vendors are more optimistic about 2018 with 86 percent expecting their business volume to increase while 63 percent of hospitals project their IT operating budgets to stay the same. 
4. Hospitals are more likely to modify IT projects due to staffing challenges than vendors. More than half (51 percent) of hospital respondents saying they had to hold or scale back IT projects due to staffing challenges. 
5.  Health IT professionals looking for a job should look to vendors, with 69 percent of vendors saying they have open positions. 

The authors concluded that the part of the muted outlook for hospital representatives may be due to past challenges in completing information and technology projects as originally planned. The challenges of matching resources to needs and filling health IT positions remain difficult.