Outsourcing of IT facilities and infrastructure, which works well in wide-ranging industries, is looking better to health care decision- makers as technologies have evolved into a more appealing package. Outsourcing is friendlier both to IT departments and end-users, but is producing new challenges, as well.

Winding back the clock in a scenario familiar to IT staffs, the application of technology utilized to improve or facilitate patient care required various specialized hardware and software systems and highly technical expertise. Fortuitously, system providers began implementing technologies on more standardized platforms. Now, patient rooms or nurse stations contain PCs with peripheral devices accomplishing the tasks of yesterday’s specialized, proprietary devices, but running on a more standardized infrastructure.

The impact
While that’s good, it calls for new IT solutions because the infrastructure shift signals a change in how internal IT works, too. Not a shortcoming of IT staff, but due to platforms becoming more commoditized, an internal IT organization’s ability to support this new environment is sometimes less than that of a fine-tuned service provider’s ability.

And, that’s true at health care organizations of all sizes. Even large hospitals do not necessarily have IT skills comparable to a managed services provider in supplying high-availability/standardized infrastructures. On the opposite end, for smaller hospitals, staying current has always been a resource challenge as newer technologies keep coming their way.

Along with this infrastructure shift, the technology trend of more newly licensed physicians is driving new technology adoption to new levels. Unlike previous generations, today’s physicians have grown up with technology; they are not change-resistant, and expect to have leading-edge technology in their hands to help them be more effective in patient treatment.

In turn, these factors combine to exert more demands on health care institutions to have a 100-percent available technology infrastructure. Now, with the ubiquitous clipboard being replaced, the computerized physician order entry application cannot go down. The environment breeds potential headaches for health care organizations about network outages, system failures and viruses, all of which are typically best handled by a managed services provider.

Strategic approach
To make the transition to managed services, health care organizations should expeditiously take some basic steps. First, clearly delineate which services are now being provided internally that are more commodity-oriented (i.e., can be bought better than self-produced). Once you make that determination, decide how to reallocate internal resources -- in other words, redeploying them into higher value roles. That includes transitioning resources such as network, storage, monitoring and the latest technology being promoted by hardware and software vendors.

Of course, organizations could look into how they would develop new competencies internally. But, typically the process is more focused on how the organization will find a best-of-breed partner. Sub-steps include understanding criticality and different types of systems, along with possibly building in substantial security and redundancy.

But, for the latter, which can be expensive, it is important to be practical in scaling the service level and technology that will be implemented. As an indicator of what health care organizations are doing in bringing managed services on board, it is worth noting the most popular areas: disaster recovery, network management and shared storage (replicating information off-site).

In many respects, the health care field continues to be in the early adoption stages regarding both new technology and using outsourced managed services. Therefore, the key to success is structuring outsourcing relationships to bring out the mutual strengths of both the organization and the outsourced service provider. As IT becomes increasingly commoditized, not unlike myriad other services within the institution, the comfort level for commoditized infrastructure will also grow -- to institutions’ direct benefit -- by yielding significant savings and operational simplification.

Mr. McLane is vice president of Houston-based CyrusOne (www.cyrusone.com), specializing in outsourced IT infrastructure.