Home // Who We Serve //
Rural and critical access hospitals are facing immense challenges recruiting, training and retaining good IT support. Your 2 biggest problems are:
Hiring and retaining qualified health IT technicians are exceedingly hard to find in rural areas. As Hospital IT needs get more demanding (and dependent on digital information), you technicians need to be capable explicitly and specifically in health information management:
EHR implementations — Our consultants have expertise in all of the common EHR platforms in hospital settings and are skilled in supporting and transitioning through EHR implementations. Some of our experts have acute knowledge in the following EHR systems:
Healthcare Security and HIPAA — Saying you’re HIPAA compliant and actually being so can often mean two separate things. We make sure your business is secure from hacking, data breaches and ransomware and completely compliant to HIPAA-HITECH standards without extra spending.
MACRA — One of our priorities is making sure your hospital maximizes its Medicare payments. We keep your information systems compliant so that you can reap necessary Medicare benefits to keep the lights on and your patients treated.
Healthcare Networking — Healthcare networks have specific needs that many IT teams overlook. Heuristic security and monitoring in place and active 24/7. Network encryption and integration with EHR platforms. Secure cloud environments that meet HIPAA standards (most frighteningly are not!).
Radiology Support — We understand that radiology is critical to ER operations and patient care. With growing technical demands, we have relationships and understand how to troubleshoot radiology technical issues.
How can one person or a handful of people manage all this? How can one person keep track of all of your health IT infrastructure, support all of your hospital’s critical roles and pass the baton in the event they get sick or take leave?
Demand for good technicians in IT (let alone ones that are intimately familiar with rural hospital IT) is becoming a bigger challenge for businesses large and small. For hospitals in rural settings, the added challenge of recruiting and retaining quality health IT technicians becomes harder, as compensation in urban areas typically pay 10-15% higher than those in rural areas.
In rural America, the average introductory technician makes $33K in rural markets (that’s below pay in adjacent urban areas), compared to $36K in more urban areas.
A 25-bed hospital typically needs 4 IT Support staff to get consistent 9-5 service Monday through Friday.
At minimum, your IT spend will be 4 X $33,000.
A Total salary cost of $132,000 annually.
That doesn’t take into account benefits (healthcare, retirement, and other benefits needed to recruit and retain good candidates). And as an employee commits to working for your hospital, expect a 4 percent annual raise (industry standards). An additional $5,000 increase to your budget annually.
Bottom line: if you want full support from your internal IT team, you will likely be shelling out a LOT more than you can afford. And even then, you probably won’t have 24/7/365 support your staff need to depend on.
How can you not afford Fixed Healthcare IT? Contact Us Today for a FREE network assessment!
