Information technology (IT) keeps behavioral health, home health, and hospice organizations operating each day — except when it doesn’t. You see, investing in IT often doesn’t happen until something breaks. And, let’s face it, it’s tough to see IT as a priority when patient-facing concerns need immediate attention.

But the truth is that leaving IT out of your organization’s business strategy can have a huge detrimental impact on its IT performance, stability, and efficiency in the long run.

If you haven’t thought about your behavioral health, home health, or hospice organization’s IT strategy lately, now is the time to take a hard look at the state of your tech and whether it’s serving your organization’s needs. The most thorough way to do this? Get an expert IT assessment.

What Is an IT Assessment?

An IT assessment is a detailed analysis of all aspects of your behavioral health, home health, or hospice organization’s information technology operations. An IT assessment evaluates how well your IT team is meeting your staff’s needs and supporting your organization’s goals.

The many potential benefits of an IT assessment include:

• Ensuring that your IT department’s functions and responsibilities align with your behavioral health, home health, or hospice organization’s business objectives.
• Establishing the structure and processes that will promote continued trust and transparency between your leadership team and the IT department.
• Identifying (and recommending solutions for) inefficiencies that are costing your behavioral health, home health, or hospice organization time and money.
• Implementing industrywide best practices to protect your systems and safeguard your data.
• Removing obstacles that are preventing your IT team from operating at a higher level.

“IT can do more than simply keep the lights on,” said Ron Slater, Vice President of IT Services at SimiTree. “They can improve staff productivity. They can reduce costs. And they can help the organization operate more effectively.”

Why Get an IT Assessment?

It’s easy to understand the value of an IT assessment if you’ve recently gone through a crisis or discovered a serious flaw in your information infrastructure. But if things seem to be going relatively smoothly, it may be a bit more difficult to see the appeal of bringing in a team of outside experts.

While an IT assessment can definitely help you put the proverbial pieces back together after a catastrophe, the true benefit of this process is preventing you from ever getting to that point in the first place.

Also, if your IT team is spending 100% of their time simply keeping your system up and running, who is preparing it to handle the increased demands and additional challenges that will accompany your organization’s continued growth?

In other words, an IT assessment is an opportunity to bolster your team’s current capabilities while also establishing a foundation for future successes. Here are a few examples of what this process can help you accomplish:

• Prepare your IT department for continuous growth and scaling
• Enhance communication within your IT department and with other units throughout your organization
• Optimize your processes to improve efficiency and reduce expenditures
• Eliminate redundancies to achieve a leaner, more agile system
• Provide your IT professionals with the focused training and support they need
• Empower your IT team members to consider the long-term, downstream impact of their decisions
• Evaluate new technologies and processes that can improve your behavioral health, home health, or hospice organization’s overall effectiveness
• Develop the KPIs and benchmarks that will allow you to assess your IT department’s progress in terms of industrywide standards and your organizational goals
• Create a mechanism to gather, evaluate, and act on feedback from all relevant stakeholders

Learn More About IT Assessments

We explain what happens during an IT assessment of your behavioral health, home health, or hospice organization in another blog post, so be sure to check that out. It’s quite an extensive process that results in a customized roadmap that allows you to optimize your technology to better align with your business goals.

Contact us today to learn how an IT assessment can promote growth and cost-savings for your behavioral health, home health, or hospice organization!