Elevating Healthcare with a Managed Services Provider

Partnering with a Managed Services Provider (MSP) not only alleviates a hospital’s concern about their technology but also elevates their quality of patient care.

As healthcare organizations grow and meet new challenges, the urgency to upgrade their technology becomes apparent. Having effective processes and technologies in place is crucial for remaining competitive while embracing growth and tackling the ever-changing industry. But the realities of revamping a hospital’s strategies means creating budgets, planning for new technologies and their implementation, and hiring expert talent – which can occur quickly and be overwhelming. Managed services offer a strategic solution by outsourcing these responsibilities, freeing hospitals from the burdens of onboarding, anticipating, and maintaining these energy draining, time consuming initiatives.

What is a Managed Services Provider?

An MSP is a strategic IT consulting firm that empowers hospitals to elevate and oversee critical operations, applications, and IT initiatives. By doing so, an MSP not only optimizes costs but also minimizes risks. MSPs specialized in healthcare will carry deep industry expertise, fostering a heightened understanding and effective strategies for healthcare-specific requirements. Partnering with an MSP enables hospitals and clinics to outsource responsibilities rather than managing them in-house.

Is a Managed Services Provider Right for You?

It may seem difficult to assess and decide if partnering with an MSP is the right choice for your healthcare organization. But onboarding and retaining a small number of employees to cover all the needed skillsets can be even more challenging, costly, and inefficient. Partnering with an MSP takes these items off your plate and manages them for you, all while fostering an easy transition.

Questions to ask yourself when considering an MSP partnership:

• Is it challenging to recruit and retain top, expert talent?
• Are you unable to afford the talent in your local market?
• Is too much time being spent on non-strategic activities, distracting your team from being successful with the important, strategic items?
• Are you having challenges providing and delivering services?
• Is it difficult to keep up with your ticket volumes and maintenance tasks?

Answer yes to any of these questions? Then partnering with an MSP may be the perfect solution for your organization. Some of the best times to begin a partnership are when:

• You’re setting future strategic goals for your organization
• You want to integrate new IT services into your organization

The Benefits of Partnering with a Managed Services Provider:

1. Reduces Costs
   Partnering with an MSP removes a hospital’s cost risk of in-house staff turnover, continued training, and the need to purchase any additional equipment. MSPs can provide solutions to hospitals at scale while using proven tools and processes that drive the best quality.
   
   
2. Scales to Your Needs
   MSPs serve multiple clients and can be flexible with resource scalability for each client as needed. For example, if an issue arises within a hospital, or if a new technology is being integrated, the MSP can provide more resources until the issue is resolved or the new tech is stabilized. This adds another facet to the cost benefits of MSPs. Hospital’s will no longer be financially responsible for keeping an expert, in-house team who’s top skills are only situationally being used. Inefficiencies like this also result in employees feeling less engaged and fulfilled in their work, leading to moral challenges and potential turnover.
   
   
3. Provides Proven Talent and Processes
   When a hospital partners with an MSP, they’re buying expert talent and established processes that are proven to work within the healthcare industry. An organization no longer needs to be responsible for finding expert talent and discovering their own seamless processes.
   The cost of finding, hiring, and retaining quality talent is expensive – this is especially true in areas with a high cost of living. For hospitals in rural areas, it’s often difficult to find the quality of talent desired. And once a team is in place, there’s the additional cost of providing continued education to keep this expertise up to date. MSPs relieve these challenges by having an established and successful team available, and by being responsible for managing talent onboarding and employee retention – bringing you the value you need, faster.
   
   
4. Reduces Time Spent on Non-Strategic Activities
   Partnering with an MSP allows a hospital’s employees to practice at the top of their license. Time is valuable, and it shouldn’t have to be spent on distracting, non-strategic activities such as new employee onboarding processes, managing the help desk, and monitoring IT issues. An MSP takes away these burdens, so healthcare teams can function at the top of their abilities and do work that is strategically important to the hospital.
   
   
5. Improves Overall Satisfaction
   MSPs bring a significant improvement to satisfaction. Not only throughout a hospital’s internal team members, but for their patients as well. When a hospital’s processes and IT systems work seamlessly, the employees are more satisfied, have less stress, and have more productive time to focus on what’s most important – their patients. 

Key Factors to Look for in a Provider

As you search for an MSP, it’s important to find a partner that will work with your unique needs. Here are some key factors to look for when considering a partnership with an MSP:

1. Healthcare Specific
   There are numerous MSPs to choose from – but your hospital needs one that is specific to the healthcare industry. You need an MSP that carries the knowledge of what the “day-to-day” is really like for your staff and patients. Time is valuable in this industry – spending wasted time working with an MSP that doesn’t understand the healthcare language, doesn’t have a sense of urgency, or doesn’t understand the implications of mistakes can not only cost you money, but can severely and negatively impact the wellbeing of your patients.
   
   
2. Flexibility
   Many MSP’s solutions come with inflexible services and a stiff, lengthy contract. When searching for the MSP that fits just right, look for firms that can be flexible in contract terms and length. Finding an MSP that also provides a reasonable timeline for contract termination gives you both the time and freedom to discern if that MSP was the right choice.
   
   
3. Partnership vs Vendor
   An MSP partnership is a firm that’s invested in your continued success. This means you’ll always have a team on your side, looking out for you when it’s most important. Your success means your hospital is saving the most money while also meeting your desired goals. A true partner will provide flexible services and work with you until your needs are fully addressed and met.
   

Last Modified: 10/17/2023

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