Nine hospitals across the country have filed for bankruptcy thus far in 2017. Small facilities, in particular, continue to feel the pinch from a combination of dwindling patient volume, rising capital requirements, escalating costs of care, bad debt accruals and lack of Medicaid funding.

Clearly, something needs to be done to stem the flow of red ink.

Fortunately, we’re seeing a healthy response from health IT vendors, who’ve identified an opportunity among the chaos. Electronic health record (EHR) firms Meditech, athenahealth and eClinicalWorks have rolled out cloud-based versions of their platforms aimed at bringing cost-effective processing and simplified technology contracting to the small-hospital domain.

Even EHR stalwart Epic is joining the movement. On Nov. 1, Tahoe Forest Health System, which serves two rural counties across 3,500 square miles in California and Nevada, went live with a new version of Epic’s EHR. The health system’s CFO, Crystal Betts, anticipates “significant savings without the maintenance of eight EHRs and [retirement of] a host of third-party ancillary systems no longer needed.” Betts added, “The cherry on top is time saved and a boost to quality and safety with a tightly integrated EHR that just works.”

Likewise, athenahealth’s cloud-based EHR has made a significant impact at Coastal Orthopedics (Conway, S.C.), which implemented the technology a little over a year ago to replace separate EHR and practice management systems. “We wanted to be in a position to jump in quickly and effectively as population health management becomes [our] new top-of-mind issue,” noted practice administrator Andrew Wade. With the EHR taking on redundant data-collection tasks, providers and staff have been able to spend more time on patient care.

Above and Beyond

Meanwhile, the healthcare research/ academic community is also leveraging the power of cloud computing. For example, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, scientists and physicians have access to more than 100 terabytes of data generated by DNA sequences as they study the molecular basis of breast and ovarian cancer. They use Amazon Web Services’ cloud to support a genomics platform that dynamically scales to analyze tens of thousands of genomes in a matter of minutes.

In short, cloud computing has enabled management to shift from worrying about data storage, performance, and security to helping researchers understand the sequenced output data.

There’s more to come, too. “The cloud is poised to play a prominent role when healthcare organizations deploy telemedicine, mobile health applications, and remote monitoring tools — trends that are inevitable as organizations implement value-based care programs,” according to a HIMSS Analytics cloud computing survey.

Pathway to Progress

As healthcare organizations continue to put their faith in the cloud, they’re looking for partners who can facilitate implementation and replace layers of internal systems management and integration. And, not coincidentally, they want to do so with predictable ongoing costs.

NetDirector’s cloud-based HealthData Exchange fits the desired profile by normalizing data and documents to achieve EHR interoperability with an expanding array of trading partners, including physician groups, labs, registries and imaging centers. Subscription pricing meshes with organizations’ emerging reliance on scalable services made possible by cloud technology.

For more information, please contact us or request a free demo.