While COVID-19 has trampled the world with challenges for over two years now, its occurrence hasn’t come without new opportunities. One of the most notable is the potential for an enhancement of the healthcare sector through technology, specifically new forms of software designed to make providers’ jobs easier and more efficient. Organizations are taking notice of the ever-growing sea of solutions available at their fingertips, and as we continue to emerge from the pandemic, are seeing them as a practical investment for long-term success.
A recently released study done by KLAS Research in partnership with Bain & Company dives into this trend in detail, surveying providers on their plans to adopt software in the post-COVID world. In this article, we’ll go over its key findings and discuss what they mean for the current outlook of the healthcare sector.
COVID-19 and healthcare’s response
The first thing KLAS Research and B&C’s 2022 Healthcare Provider IT Report discusses is the dynamic shift seen in the healthcare sector after the onset of COVID-19. It notes that providers have been stretched to the limit during this time, and have had to rapidly adapt in order to meet the unique challenges posed by the pandemic. A lot of this relates to investments in software, which have seen a marked uptick in recent months as organizations aspire to stay afloat and improve their chances of success in the future.
According to the study, 45% of providers accelerated software investments over the past year. This is likely due to a number of different factors, such as clinician shortages, inflation, and the need to find solutions that can help alleviate labor needs. However, it’s also worth noting that there’s a general recognition that COVID-19 has changed care delivery forever, making software more critical than ever before.
The challenges of finding the right solutions
While it’s clear that the healthcare industry is moving towards a tech-led future, KLAS Research and B&C’s report finds that over 50% of providers are struggling to find the right solutions for their needs. There is a massive breadth of software tools on the market to choose from, and organizations simply aren’t sure or trusting of any one product. A common trend the report discovered was that providers tend to look to their existing vendors with proven solutions before considering offerings from new vendors.
This isn’t terribly surprising when you think about it. After all, providers are under immense pressure to find solutions that will work well and provide a good return on investment. They don’t have the time or resources to be testing out new products, so it only makes sense that they would stick with what they know. That being said, this does create somewhat of a catch-22 for new software vendors. In order to get their products in front of providers, they need to prove that they’re worth the investment. But in order to do that, they need providers to actually use their products.
The KLAS Research and B&C report doesn’t have any easy answers for this quandary. However, it does make a few suggestions, such as emphasizing labor productivity and clinical ROI, highlighting customer satisfaction rates, and partnering with other companies that have an established presence in the healthcare industry.
