Healthcare Technology Solution: How to Amplify Your Existing Team

The application of healthcare technology spans a wide spectrum, encompassing everything from addressing security and privacy challenges to seamlessly integrating existing software with new solutions, minimizing provider fatigue from software alerts, and harnessing the power of data analytics. However, navigating this expansive terrain comes with its share of challenges.

Healthcare technology organizations often operate with dedicated teams, but the complexity of the field necessitates a comprehensive understanding of various aspects, from regulatory compliance to cybersecurity testing. Unfortunately, these teams are seldom adequately staffed to possess expertise in all areas, leaving them in need of external assistance at times.

To address this need, the concept of augmenting tech teams has gained traction, with two main approaches emerging. On the one hand, organizations can choose to bolster their in-house staff by hiring more specialized professionals. On the other hand, they can opt for the flexibility and expertise of temporary external consultants. The latter can offer numerous benefits for an organization, such as increasing its flexibility and enhancing workplace transparency, reliability, and cost savings.

This article contrasts the two approaches for augmenting your team and highlights why augmentation via outsiders is worth considering.

Flexibility: Enhancing Scalability and Adaptability

The scalability and adaptability challenges for healthcare organization tech teams can be summarized by the following issues:

1. Many healthcare technology needs are unique and one time, such as transferring data from one electronic medical record to another.
2. A large staff with diverse skill sets is needed to cover all aspects of healthcare technology because it integrates cybersecurity, user experience, and back-end development, among many other areas.
3. It is challenging to keep up with the latest evolutions in technology because innovation occurs so quickly.

An illustrative case in point that many healthcare organizations face is the integration of an electronic medical record (EMR) system from local servers to cloud servers—a costly transition that typically occurs only once. To address this challenge, augmenting the tech team with consultants proves to be an effective solution, enabling easy adjustments to the team size based on project demands. For example, consultants can focus on the transfer of data from local to cloud servers, a one-time act that requires significant scale but provides greater flexibility to in-house staff. Moreover, consultants can provide valuable previous experience due to having done similar projects at other institutions.

In-house organizations often need more specialized expertise and workforce for these one-time needs, whereas consultants can provide additional personnel and valuable previous experience, facilitating smoother project execution.

The ability to swiftly adapt to changing technological needs and emerging trends is vital in the fast-paced healthcare tech landscape. Keeping up with best practices can be demanding, making it beneficial to learn from experienced consultants who have successfully implemented similar changes before. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of telehealth platforms put considerable stress on many IT departments. In this critical transition, consultants played a pivotal role, offering valuable insights and expertise.

Ultimately, it can be challenging for a single organization’s staff to keep up with the workforce needs of certain healthcare technological endeavors, so temporarily utilizing external experts may satisfy the need to scale and adapt your team’s workflow.

Reliability: Leveraging Expertise and Experience

Reliable personnel are frequently needed to see large and complex healthcare technology solutions brought to completion. Hiring team members experienced with your issue increases the likelihood that your technology project will be solved more efficiently. In contrast, new employees with limited experience often require extensive training and oversight, which exacerbates the workload of well-trained team members.

Unfortunately, the large scale and complexity of a healthcare technology solution can lead to projects experiencing delays. The need to replace existing healthcare technology infrastructure conflicts with the continual need to operate that technology 24/7, leading to burnout and reduced employee reliability.

Augmented teams offer a promising solution by bringing together diverse skill sets and expertise from different professionals who will impact reliability through improved system performance, enhanced security, and better patient outcomes. For instance, in the implementation and monitoring of cybersecurity measures, an augmented tech team can fortify healthcare systems against potential threats and breaches. Their expertise ensures that patient data remains protected, maintaining confidentiality and safeguarding against any vulnerabilities that could compromise the integrity of the system.

Transparency: Improving Communication and Collaboration

It has been well established within clinical medicine that poor communication by healthcare professionals can lead to medical error. However, it is equally important for people involved in healthcare technology to have excellent communication because missteps in technology development and implementation can affect patients on a large scale.

One source of poor outcomes within information technology is limited technical knowledge, such as in the case of IT auditors. Augmented team members bring previous experience that helps them develop adequate practical skills to avoid simple mistakes. Having a knowledgeable team facilitates better decision-making and overall project success because mutual comprehension is established faster, ensuring that the intended targets are met without ambiguity or confusion.

Augmented team members can also enhance the knowledge base of internal team members on how to navigate novel healthcare technology topics. The augmented staff serves as an additional resource for educating in-house staff for long-term success. Since external team members often operate outside the long-term politics of the organization, they ultimately have strong incentives to strengthen all members of an in-house team, as it reflects well on the external organization.

Cost Savings: Maximizing Efficiency and ROI

The return on investment of augmenting the tech team with external consultants becomes evident in cost savings and increased employee morale. Increased employee morale commonly stems from the avoidance of burnout. Cost savings can occur in many forms, such as reduced hiring expenses, minimal benefit payments, and saved time spent on the project, reducing hourly-basis costs. An organization’s bottom line is enhanced with the avoidance of a long-term payroll burden, leading to cost savings in the long run and greater flexibility in terms of how an organization allocates its precious capital.

Another financial advantage lies in the ability to tap into a national and global talent pool, potentially lowering labor costs. Specialized expertise is often required in healthcare IT, and partnering with firms that have an extensive network of skilled professionals enables organizations to expand beyond their geographical area to find the right talent without incurring substantial expenses. This strategic approach helps optimize costs while ensuring that the necessary expertise is readily available to tackle the complex technological challenge.

The typical rule of thumb is a 5:1 savings-to-costs ratio for the use of healthcare consultants, and an organization that embraces team augmentation with external consultants may experience significantly greater financial flexibility to allocate capital toward other endeavors.

Conclusion

Overall, augmenting your tech team in healthcare technology solutions with external consultants offers a host of advantages that can elevate the success of your projects. While expanding the team through hiring is an option, it entails extra work for the in-house organization and comes with substantial associated costs. Conversely, embracing augmented teams brings about the benefits of flexibility, transparency, reliability, and cost savings.

Healthcare organizations must recognize the value that augmented teams have in terms of driving successful technology implementations. Among the potential resources available, OtterSoft as a reliable partner can be a wise choice, as its team members will leverage their expertise to navigate the complexities of healthcare IT and help you achieve sustainable growth and innovation in the ever-evolving healthcare landscape.

Here at OtterSoft, we help healthcare technology providers drive innovation and integrate smoothly with legacy systems to keep things in motion, address the challenges of healthcare innovation, and seamlessly keep information in sync. Please get in touch with us today to see how we can help you overcome healthcare innovation challenges by strategically augmenting your team!