Executive Summary

You may not be directly caring for patients, but healthcare IT professionals care deeply about delivering a good patient experience. That healthcare IT professionals play a critical role in the patient experience came through loud and clear in our recent survey of 200+ IT healthcare professionals.

Our survey lends a lot of insight into exactly how being a healthcare IT professional means much more than managing the EHR system – though there are still many challenges to be solved there. It’s all more complex than it was five years ago, 94% told us, and 88% say they’ve taken on tasks outside of their role as it is traditionally defined. Our respondents say they are thinking more about business outcomes, taking responsibility for enhancing security, and collaborating with executive staff from across departments. Sound familiar?

Doubters of how complex and expansive the healthcare IT role is now need look no further than the fact that your job performance is now being measured on non-technical metrics. Some 98% of the IT professionals we surveyed said that when it comes to the roles and responsibilities by which they are measured, improving patient experience and patient satisfaction is important. A full 90% say they’re being measured against patient collections metrics.

And when asked to look ahead five years to how their role in improving the organization’s overall patient experience will change, no one said that this role will be smaller.

While the IT environment in healthcare can be extremely challenging and complex, most IT professionals find that they feel the same calling as their colleagues on the clinical side. Almost everyone said that feeling like what you do actually helps people is one of the best parts of the job.

In this report, learn more about how your peers view their evolving roles, the challenges and opportunities they’re working to solve, a view of EHR system projects and plans, and what’s ahead.