2 U.S. health systems keep IT in-house despite outsourcing trend
FLORIDA, UNITED STATES — While a number of healthcare systems are outsourcing information technology (IT) workers, two U.S. medical firms — AdventHealth and CoxHealth — prefer to keep an in-house IT department.
Florida-based AdventHealth keeps an in-house IT department, which consists of 2,200 members. Missouri-based CoxHealth used to outsource its IT operations from Oracle Health. But in 2012, the health system brought back its IT department.
The two firms cite better cultural alignment and faster resolution as the main drivers for the decision to move away from outsourcing.
This initiative goes against the trend of healthcare firms opting to outsource their IT departments to save costs, gain access to digital experts, enhance cybersecurity for patient data, and many more.
For instance, Washington-based healthcare firm Providence IT department is made up of approximately 3,000 caregivers in the U.S. and India. It even plans to allot 5% of its fixed budget to generative artificial intelligence to ride the ongoing tech wave.
Other hospitals that outsource their IT functions are Allina Health, Inova Health, Care New England, Northern Light Health, Owensboro Health, and ProHealth Care.
These medical institutions look to simplify its day-to-day operations through an enhanced billing infrastructure, increased data accuracy, faster processing of payments, reduced costs of managing servers, and many more.
With a dedicated IT department taking care of back-office functions, hospital systems can devote their energies to delivering high-value patient care.
