Top 12 reasons organizations pay too much for health IT

Healthcare pays more than any other industry for information technology. At least according to a new survey.

"Our analysis shows healthcare organizations pay an average 17 percent more than that of the other 29 industries we sampled," write the authors of a paper by Net(net), which bills itself as a consultancy specializing in IT optimization, "and 33 percent more than the industry with the lowest average costs (food service).”

And that reality spans the gamut of IT, including financial applications, Microsoft desktop productivity licenses, networking equipment, servers, storage – even vertical applications specifically for healthcare from vendors including Epic, McKesson and Cerner.

"The breadth of scope of this 'healthcare premium' indicates that this is not an industry-specific difference for one type of technology unique to healthcare, but rather a general premium that applies to all technology,” the authors add.

And there are many reasons for this. Here are the dozen outlined by Net(net).

1. Healthcare organizations focus on patient care and safety.

Unlike many other industries, in healthcare lives are on the line – and that demands “extremely high performance and reliability” of IT. What’s more, the authors note that “the total costs of these initiatives often pale in comparison to the potential liability of a wrongful death lawsuit.”

2. Health entities lack a profit motive.

Private, public or non-profit, most healthcare providers now concentrate on driving revenue in the traditional quarterly business cycle. Even still, “when technology costs go up, healthcare providers usually just factor increases in technology costs into the total costs of service without much of an awareness of other, less costly methods to achieve the same result,” the report explains. While CFOs in other realms focus on profit to drive up stock prices and market capitalization, that happens “much less so in healthcare.”

3. Health systems are often inefficient, tough to automate.

By nature, health care delivery tends to be subjective and at the same time highly-regulated, which makes both automation and process implementation more difficult. On top of that, the processes often require more technology, according to the report. “Healthcare processes are often more intense due to the necessary verification and re-verification of data and the multiple departments involved. “Most healthcare organizations see technology as a means to an end and do not always have a good handle on their technology spending,” the authors explain. “In some cases, they do not know what they are spending where and for what reason.”

[See also: Costs, lack of standards agreement hamper healthcare IT adoption, experts tell Congress.]