Managed Services: How to Improve the Health of Your Network

Even with COVID-19 considered under control – albeit cautiously and with constant vigilance – Canadian healthcare organizations of all sizes and services are still being stretched to the limits across all facets of operations. From patient care to operations to IT services, there is immense pressure to find new ways of working to drive efficiencies and collaboration.

Although it’s now common for services such as housekeeping and catering to be outsourced in order to focus in-house resources on core functions, there has been more hesitancy in incorporating managed services for healthcare IT, often because it is perceived as expensive or difficult to manage.

The fact is that supplementing in-house IT teams with customized managed services can help healthcare organizations quickly scale up to accommodate new requests and scale down when resources are no longer needed – all while reducing costs, increasing efficiencies and improving care.

1. Reduce Costs

Always a key consideration when considering any service; adopting IT-managed services can help reduce operating costs while providing finance teams with predictable operational costs and monthly spending.

• Better manage costs associated with systems maintenance
• Reduce costs associated with hiring and retaining talent
• Lower costs from hardware purchases, patches and more

2. Increase Efficiency

Just as medical equipment needs to be monitored regularly to ensure optimal performance, so does an IT network. An experienced managed services partner can increase the efficiency of in-house IT teams by handling ongoing maintenance, facilitating proactive software updates, and conducting regular security reviews to reduce potential vulnerabilities, allowing in-house resources to focus efforts on strategic enhancements.

• Accelerate system response, patch detection and backlog resolution
• Maintain servers, applications and services at proper revision levels
• Enhance protection of user data
• Timely communication of vulnerabilities
• Mitigate the risk of cyber incidents and outages

3. Improve Patient Care

While often evaluated first on their cost-saving abilities, an experienced managed service provider with a multi-disciplinary team can deliver additional value by identifying possible improvements to streamline administrative operations and improve the caregiver experience.

• Ensure system availability for uninterrupted access to patient data
• Support the technology that powers practice workflows
• Provide reliable notifications and alerts

Healthcare IT teams face the ever-growing challenge of managing a wide range of systems and infrastructure to support uninterrupted patient care – all while dealing with reduced budgets and expanding service expectations.

Whether the effort is large or small, Logibec can oversee critical functions that streamline processes, track costs and maximize performance.