Helping Smaller Hospitals Transition To Digital

Of the roughly 5,700 hospitals in the United States, most are community based, city funded, small hospitals. These hospitals have less to spend than their larger, enterprise counterparts but they are facing similar challenges. Chuck Gallamore, the IBM Client Solutions Leader for Provider Healthcare in the Southeast, told us for smaller hospitals, “lack of access to information has steep consequences.” To help cash strapped hospitals and health clinics, IBM is fostering collaboration, educating administrators, and creating new solutions to address their specific challenges.

What makes smaller hospitals unique?

Modern healthcare’s reliance on technology is a mixed blessing. Given the right tools and training, medical staff can accomplish things never previously possible, but reliance on technology can be time consuming and expensive. Hospitals realize the cost and risk in using old hardware until it breaks and have started replacing hardware sooner as a result.

New technology has a lower risk of failure but it’s still a major burden. Overtaxed staff members require training and the need for more upgrades seem endless. Hospitals are somehow supposed to find more time and money while their margins are shrinking from market pressures. They have to do more with much less and staff members are struggling to keep up. Fortunately, IBM healthcare solutions can help.

IBM for Mid-market Hospitals

IBM has a straightforward formula for creating solutions that work: collaborate, listen, and create. IBM collaborates with mid-market hospitals by fostering a community. By gathering hospitals facing similar challenges together, they can share their information and experiences to prevent expensive mistakes and accelerate transitions to solutions that work. IBM listens in and creates solutions from these key market insights. Through collaboration, everyone learns how to face these challenges together. Ultimately, IBM creates technologies that address the needs and concerns of these hospitals.

At the forefront of a mid-market hospitals concern is cost. IT solutions need to quickly and easily integrate into the healthcare environment in order to keep costs down. Extended training and extensive modifications all result in additional costs that many hospitals can’t afford. By collaborating with these hospitals, IBM has created healthcare solutions that are easily adopted by staff and integrated into an old infrastructure. IBM healthcare solutions for mid-market hospitals provide enterprise level solutions at a fraction of the cost.