11/22/22

Healthcare IT Outsourcing: Services of the Most Interest

The concept of healthcare IT outsourcing has been popular for a long time but earlier applied exclusively to non-critical functions of hospital services such as laundry, housekeeping, food, supply chain management, etc. 

However, with the rapid development of technology, healthcare leaders have realized that outsourcing technology services can significantly reduce their operating costs. The only problem is the availability of digital-savvy resources, which is often a deficiency on the healthcare market.

That’s the reason why business process outsourcing (BPO) becomes the brick-and-mortar of any healthcare strategy.  All those who still observe this process and ignore the obvious advantages need to know which services are most often trusted to third-party specialists and why. In this piece, we shed some light on that question and explain why IT outsourcing is a solid strategy for healthcare.

Healthcare IT Outsourcing: Why It Becomes Solid

One of the biggest and most heavily regulated businesses in the world is healthcare. Being an ardent traditionalist, however, this sector is still behind many industries in technology adoption. Today, the situation is changing, and in a way, healthcare is “catching up” to deliver quality services, precise diagnosis, ensure flexible treatment, and the best services – something technology can provide.

Leveraging technology, however, requires a large number of resources and tech knowledge — thus, healthcare software development services are in high demand today. IT is one of the most regularly outsourced domains. By 2023, the global healthcare IT outsourcing market is expected to be worth $61 billion.

Global Healthcare IT Outsourcing Market Size

Global Healthcare IT Outsourcing Market Size

Easy access to a wide pool of technical professionals worldwide allows healthcare companies to successfully introduce innovation into diagnosis processes and automate various critical tasks from medical billing and coding to clinical services. According to researchers, healthcare IT outsourcing helps companies save 30-60% on costs. Among the most common outsourced healthcare functions are: 

  • medical coding/billing
  • medical transcription
  • claims processing
  • virtual assistants
  • healthcare customer support

The Growing Demand for Excellent Patient Services

The wind of change like the recent pandemic has brought shifts to all areas of user experience — in the first place to healthcare. This shift is primarily associated with the mass introduction of remote consultations (telemedicine) and cloud services to regular healthcare practices. In the second quarter of 2020 outsourcing healthcare and IT cloud services increased by 11% due to scalability and remote care enablement. By the end of 2020, the global telemedicine market is anticipated to be worth more than $34 billion.

Also, health organizations are under growing pressure to deliver excellent patient care. To meet today’s varied patient engagement touchpoints (mobile, text, email, etc.), healthcare service firms will need to boost their performance criteria, according to a recent Gartner report. Every year, the inability to provide service in the way a modern patient wants to receive it results in the loss of the best opportunities for healthcare providers.

This is a very good argument in favor of outsourcing. 98% of C-Level executives claimed that they were either actively contemplating outsourcing services or had previously done so as a response to financial pressure.

Lack of Automation

Automating revenue cycle operations could equate to $11.5 million in healthcare savings. The proven way to do this is traditionally IT outsourcing to healthcare software development companies. The introduction of AI, IoT, big data, and other advanced technologies make the diagnosis process more precise and dramatically elevates patient care. The same applies to the business side of healthcare facilities, where technologies improve the efficiency of business processes, streamline the data revenue cycle and minimize the possibility of human error in processes that were traditionally manual and time-consuming. 

Economic Turmoils and Staff Shortages

Prior to the pandemic, in 2019, hospitals across the country were experiencing a 21.3% decline in operating margins. During the pandemic, this crisis only got worse. Above all, this had an economic effect and also led to a shortage of qualified staff to cover the healthcare provider’s core competency – care and treatment of patients. 

With this in mind, it becomes impossible to shift the focus of medical workers to tasks that aren’t associated with patient care. 

The main benefit of outsourcing, aside from cost, is that it allows medical professionals to minimize the tiresome but essential chore of managing administrative tasks. While the outsourcing partner helps with all non-core administrative tasks, it allows medical professionals to concentrate on giving patients high-quality care. Additionally, it offers a sizable experienced workforce that is prepared to handle projects of any size and complexity on behalf of hospitals.

How Outsourcing Can Improve Healthcare Operations

1. Cost Reduction

Cost Reduction in Global Healthcare IT Outsourcing Market

Cost Reduction in Global Healthcare IT Outsourcing Market 

According to Gartner, healthcare organizations save an average of about 23% on outsourcing contracts. Opting for outsourcing, healthcare facilities may delegate a wide range of administrative tasks, including network infrastructure, service desk, application support, and legacy maintenance to qualify third-party professionals. IT outsourcing providers may set up a dedicated team of experienced specialists for healthcare providers and ensure innovation is in place. 

With outsourcing, a service partner handles a team of professionals on the customers’ behalf, reducing the cost of hiring new staff and training them. In addition, there is no need for customers to worry about the support of their new staff – tax admission, retention, and other HR functions — all these are handled by the outsourcing services provider.

2. Greater Scalability and Access to the Best Talents on the Market

When scaling a business or product, healthcare facilities may need assistance with finance, technology, and analytics. In turn, this requires a large number of additional resources across the country, thorough knowledge of the required field, and the local market rules. 

Outsourcing providers can increase the capacity of healthcare institutions by delivering qualified front-end, mid-cycle, and back-end specialists in the required fields and technologies, providing better scalability and easy pivoting on the market

3. Mistakes Elimination and Smooth Medical Billing Process

Even insignificant errors in medical documentation can delay the payment of your medical insurance by days, not weeks. In operations that are done manually, there is room for many errors. Typical ones in the healthcare revenue cycle include misspelled first names or last names, and mistakes in dates or numbers which can result in additional expenses and wasted time. The delegation of these tasks aka medical billing BPO to technology professionals who may automate the process helps to avoid costly and critical billing issues. An outsourcing partner provides healthcare facilities with access to multiple technologies to reduce workload in medical facilities, which directly links to improved patient outcomes.

The Most Requested Healthcare Outsourcing Services

Electronic Health Records (EHR) System

Digitalization of the health record is one of the major priorities for the health sector that can improve administrative and operational tasks. In short, this is a digital version of the paper charts. This practice helps to better organize documentation within the organization and avoid paper-cluttered health records. All papers can be converted into the easy-to-use and download format and provided to the right department, patient or institution. 

According to EHR Intelligence, one-third of surveyed health IT leaders said EHR implementation support and clinical application is their top outsourcing request

The EHR system combines various functions, tools, and integrations, including patient electronic health records (healthcare history, test results, allergies, diagnosis, radiology files, etc.), patient and medical employee portal for accessing records, patient appointment-scheduling tool, and medical billing provider integration. 

A professionally developed EHR can improve patient care and boost healthcare facility performance by

  • reducing the likelihood of medical error
  • improving the accuracy of medical records
  • providing patients with insights for more informed choices
  • minimizing the need for repeated tests, hastening the course of therapy, and making health data accessible

Healthcare Data Entry Services

To create a computer-based patient record system, data should be captured and entered into the system. However, it’s worth remembering that healthcare data entry is a more technical and complex area than in other fields. According to the analysis of data errors in clinical research databases, error rates detected by the double-entry method ranged from 2.3 to 26.9%.

Since the amount of patient information and diverse data entry requirements increase, the automated process of clinical data entry is crucial. That’s why healthcare organizations seek help from third-party vendors who may introduce artificial Intelligence to help automate data entry. 

Error-Free Medical Billing and Coding Outsourcing

Successful revenue cycle management depends on timely submission of medical bills and prompt reimbursement of related claims. Especially considering that around 80% of medical bills contain errors. Healthcare workers should be highly trained to handle medical billing and coding but even that cannot guarantee the absence of mistakes because the process is still too meticulous to be done manually. For instance, lost revenue in American hospitals due to billing issues alone can be as high as 20 to 30 percent. These are expenses that both hospitals and insurance companies can avoid if they switch to medical billing BPO and customized dedicated software.

That’s why healthcare often opts medical coding outsourcing to professional service companies. Healthcare outsourcing services related to medical billing and coding help facilities to:

  • deliver cleaner and faster claims at fewer costs
  • ensure compliance with government regulations
  • improve coding accuracy

Medical Claims Processing and Scribing Service

A medical claim is a bill that healthcare providers submit to a patient’s insurance company. These claims describe the diagnosis and procedures the patient received during their billable doctor visit. This procedure ensures that the patient has adequate coverage for the treatment they received. However, nearly 50% of all medicare claims contain errors. 

This makes the simplification and automation of the entire process of scribing and submitting claims of great importance for the profitability of a medical facility. The development of dedicated software for medical records helps to protect the patient’s medical data and speeds up the process of obtaining a medical claim by several times.

IT Healthcare Outsourcing with MWDN

IT Healthcare Outsourcing with MWDN

By outsourcing certain services and inviting innovative tech professionals to the process, healthcare can focus on its core competency – providing quality patient care. Healthcare outsourcing services also help healthcare facilities to save time and money and pivot fast and the ever-changing, highly regulated market.

Outsourcing certain services, however, requires additional resources and dedicated specialists who can deliver highly secure and HIPAA-compliant services to clients around the globe. Thus, choosing between healthcare outsourcing companies may be hard,

For over 20 years as an outsource and outstaff service provider, MWDN has delivered forward-thinking solutions powered by the latest tools and technologies to vital industries around the world, including healthcare. During the years of building our reputation on the market, we’ve managed to create an impressive portfolio of web, and mobile solutions, and dedicated software for healthcare, telecom, traveling, and other industries.

With the most flexible hiring approach on the market, MWDN fills the gaps and forms a dedicated IT staff of highly skilled full-time employees that reinforce teams worldwide. Drop us a line to learn more about the expertise of MWDN in various software development domains.

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