IT Budget and Staff

Healthcare IT executives predict that both IT staff and budgets will increase.

Nearly two-thirds of healthcare IT executives in this survey predicted that the number of FTEs in their IT departments will increase in the next twelve months, compared with 60 percent in the 2004 survey. However, the changes will be relatively small—62 percent of those respondents indicating that their staff would increase projected an increase of less than 10 percent. Only five percent of respondents projected that the size of their staff is going to decrease.

Network and architecture support continues to be the area in which respondents are most likely to report staffing needs; this was selected by 36 percent of respondents, compared to 31 percent in 2004. Respondents also identify clinical informatics as a key staffing need at their organizations, selected by 35 percent of respondents (compared to 24 percent in 2004). Rounding out the top three is applications support/development, which was identified by 28 percent of respondents; this response was chosen by only 19 percent of respondents in 2004.

Process/workflow design also saw an increase in respondents in the past year. In 2005 this was selected by 26 percent of respondents, compared to 19 percent in 2004.

Respondents were also somewhat less likely to identify staffing needs in the areas of clinical transformation and clinical champions, which were ranked second and third last year.

• Clinical transformation (21 percent, compared to 25 percent in 2004)
• Clinical champions (22 percent, compared to 24 percent in 2004)

IT executives responding to the 2005 survey were more likely to report their budget would increase (76 percent), compared to 72 percent of those individuals responding to the 2004 survey. Among those predicting an increase, 34 percent reported a probable increase, and 42 percent reported a definite increase. Only six percent of respondents indicated their budget would decrease in 2005, compared to ten percent in 2004.

Respondents continue to be optimistic about the amount in which their budget will increase. Fifty-six percent of respondents indicated that their IT budget would increase by at least six percent in 2005. This is compared to nearly 60 percent of respondents who reported this level of increase in 2004.

The top three reasons for a budget increase are overall growth in the number of systems and technologies (77 percent), the need to upgrade IT infrastructure (41 percent) and an increase in the long-term IT or organizational strategic plan (39 percent).

Only six percent of respondents projected a decline in their IT budget. Among those respondents, 62 percent expected the decrease to be five percent or less. Most respondents are attributing this decrease to either an overall budget decrease (62 percent) or to deteriorating financial conditions related to cutbacks in Medicare/Medicaid (54 percent).

Only 21 percent of healthcare IT executives report that all of the IT spending is controlled within the department, with another 41 percent reporting that between one and ten percent is controlled outside of the department. Conversely, 21 percent of executives report that more than 20 percent of IT spending is controlled outside the department. These numbers are similar to those reported by individuals responding to the 2004 survey.