Healthcare Market


	GrantWood.Net

	Welcome

Today’s market for CIO talent requires greater business orientation and skills than ever before. Strategic partnering with vendors, and closer partnering with clinicians, are the new prerequisites for competitive advantage. Healthcare IT executives must now move out of the acute setting, and develop connectivity with consumers and other healthcare providers. The CIO will become more of a facilitator, orchestrating all of the relationships needed to execute the new business strategy.

Changing Healthcare Market Perspective

Healthcare executives estimate that the industry spent $8.5 billion on Y2K preparation. Because of this, many IT projects have been postponed, and resources to complete them are limited. Now a new self-imposed computer bug is upon us. Healthcare executives estimate that they could spend four times that amount complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. And if that wasn’t enough, the US government has forced upon us the Balanced Budget Act. This new law demands that healthcare services be performed, but will not be fully paid for. Why is our industry so lucky? How come the defense industry isn’t required to make warplanes and only receive 70% of the cost as payment?

In response to government attacks, and the new consumerism in healthcare, the healthcare market is looking to have web-based applications, E-Commerce systems, and the emerging eHealth technologies, provide our best defense. This will require new talents and skills from IT executives. This also presents new business opportunities for those organizations that are prepared, and who seek out executives with these talents. However, they must compete with the dotcoms that are taking the larger share of this talent. Because of these new dynamics, the value of the CIO is changing. The CIO is being called up from the computer room to enter the Boardroom.


	Healthcare CIO

The CIO will be an eHealth marketing expert, promoting the use of new technologies that will enable his or her organization to be first in emerging markets. The Electronic Medical Record is seen as being at the top of the list of important eHealth technologies. Wider adoption of EMRs by the physician community will improve the physician-patient relationship, and bring increased efficiency to the healthcare process.