Moving Ahead Of The Pack: Healthcare IT Market Growth Areas You May Be Missing
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
Getting too comfortable with the services you provide can be a big mistake in healthcare IT. While there is room for profit for everyone, avoiding certain areas can mean your company is leaving huge amounts of money and growth potential on the table.
At the Smart VAR Healthcare Summit, powered by ScanSource and Business Solutions held Aug. 11 at the Renaissance Dallas Richardson Hotel, “The Healthcare IT Guy” Shahid Shah discussed the importance of VARs not being too quick to brush these areas off for consideration.
Clinical Workflow Optimization
Workflow in healthcare is getting more and more attention as technology becomes better able to track it and reimbursement models get closer to incenting it. According to Shah, “If you can be even a partial partner in there (clinical workflow optimization), you’re going to get a lot of attention from customers, because almost all of them have one or more clinical workflow problems that they’re trying to deal with.”
Regulation
Regulations are unavoidable in healthcare but still they scare many VARs off from areas of potential success. “You hear the word regulated and you think, ‘I don’t want to get into regulated anything,’ which means that you’re leaving an entire sector of money on the table,” Shah commented. “[Physicians] are reticent to use technology because it increases their regulatory burden ... That’s why people don’t use technology” He told VARS to provide a pathway to using the technology and then help them integrate it to help them over this hurdle.
ICD-10
With the ICD-10 deadline just days away, it’s easy to consider it a “lost cause” if you haven’t already gotten involved. This is especially tempting considering the complexity in implementation the new code set offers, along with difficulties in training and education. Shah though, has a different perspective, naming it specifically as “a big area for consultation.”
Product Development
Shah’s words on product development will speak to any VAR looking to stand out from the competition if they’re willing to take some risk and push to create true value for their clients.
“That’s the V in VAR, right? What’s the added value that you provide? And if you don’t get in to product development, you are just like everybody else. If you can get in to product development you become a little better than everyone else. You get deeper into product development, you become a lot better than everybody else.”
Shah’s overall message was that too many resellers are avoiding certain areas to their own detriment, and that while these areas seem insignificant, they really can sustain quite a bit of business.
“What’s nice about healthcare is, you don’t need ten thousand physicians to do anything. Ten of them will be fine. There’s plenty of money in each one of these areas, so it’s worth doing, even in the small, if you can keep that going. Okay. So, the biggest thing that you’re going to find is, people are not going to be open to most of the technologies that you’re bringing in, but then that’s okay, there are customers with a problem-solving culture that are willing to accept risks and rewards.”
The Aug. 11 Smart VAR Healthcare Summit was held at the Renaissance Dallas Richardson Hotel. Smart VAR Healthcare Summits, powered by ScanSource and Business Solutions, are sponsored by: Honeywell, Datalogic, and Zebra.