Using the self-assessment tool, hospital IT managers, CIOs and senior leadership answer 19 questions about the sophistication and capacity of their clinical applications and IT infrastructure. The questions highlight indicators of relative strength or weakness in both areas and provide results that are meant to guide discussions between IT managers and senior leadership about the importance of pursuing a balanced approach to clinical IT implementations. No findings based upon individual usage of the Self-Assessment Tool will be made publicly available. The CDW Healthcare IT Checkup Self-Assessment Tool is online at http://www.healthitcheckup.com.
The Self-Assessment Tool scores hospitals on several indicators of strength and contra-indicators of weakness:
- Clinical Application Indicators Infrastructure Indicators
- E-prescribing Disaster Recovery
- Positive application performance Storage Management
- Extensive application deployment Network Management
- Virtualization
- Clinical Application Contra-indicators Infrastructure Contra-indicators
- Limited application deployment Limited infrastructure solutions
- Poor application performance Low percent of budget allocation
"As operating budgets grow tighter and the pressure to achieve improvements in clinical outcomes becomes paramount, healthcare providers need to ensure that they are balancing their investments to get the greatest payoff for each invested dollar," said Bob Rossi, vice president of CDW Healthcare. "By continuing the expansion of clinical applications as well as strengthening the supporting infrastructure and client technologies, IT leaders will enable those programs to operate reliably and effectively - and ultimately drive the greatest patient care improvements."
CDW Healthcare surveyed 500 clinical and IT professionals working in a hospital setting to determine national average scores for clinical application and infrastructure strength, which were included in the IT Checkup report released in March. For more information on the IT Checkup and to download the complete study, please visit www.cdwg.com/itcheckup.
Key survey findings include:
* By both objective and subjective measurements, hospitals view clinical applications as having a greater impact on patient care than IT infrastructure investments
* Those providers making sizable infrastructure investments (40 percent of IT budgets or more) are experiencing significantly better performance from their clinical applications
* When implementing clinical applications, hospitals prioritize product features such as cost over caregiver adoption and interoperability
About CDW Healthcare
CDW Healthcare is a leading provider of technology solutions focused exclusively on serving the healthcare marketplace. Working closely with more than 15,000 healthcare organizations nationwide, its customers range from small rural providers to large integrated delivery networks. The dedicated healthcare team leverages the expertise of CDW technology specialists and engineers to deliver best-in-class solutions from data center infrastructure through to point of patient care. The company's technology specialists and engineers offer expertise in designing customized solutions, while its advanced technology engineers can assist customers with the implementation and long-term management of those solutions. Areas of focus include notebooks, desktops, printers, servers and storage, unified communications, security, wireless, power and cooling, networking, software licensing and mobility solutions.
