3 Questions Healthcare Leaders Ask Us About IT

Many small companies offer managed services and IT support across the US; however, not all are up to the challenge of providing healthcare managed services. How are healthcare managed services different from typical outsourced managed services, and why does it matter to healthcare leaders considering their options?

Let's start with the obvious question: What services need to be managed? For beginners, companies have a lot of technology, and as they grow, it becomes more challenging to keep up with all the different technology pieces and how they fit together. At around 20-30 users, firms start to think about either hiring someone to keep all the technology systems working right or working with a company that can do that for them.

What is a Managed Services Provider?

Managed services providers are companies that provide managed IT services for small businesses. Generally, small IT providers have a local footprint and help local small businesses buy new computers and servers, set up and secure their network, and roll out software upgrades and patches to their information systems.

This works fine for small businesses with offices in an area, but small IT providers can get stretched thin once the company starts to grow and take on new business. This prompts many companies to look outside their area for companies that can help them with the next growth stage: expansion.

When a company looks to expand and take on more employees, businesses, patients, or clients, the amount of technology needed to keep everyone working on the same data gets increasingly complicated. This complication might prompt some teams to hire internal IT people to manage things full-time. However, there is a better way, and it comes in the form of a regional IT partner who is set up to manage larger groups' information systems and provide better IT support and technology consulting to groups who have figured out how to grow and expand beyond a tiny office.

Managed service providers are that solution and have been a big part of helping companies grow for more than two decades. Managed service providers bring larger teams than a company could ever build, with support techs, engineers, consultants, procurement, and a whole host of other products and services that would be next to impossible for a company to try and "figure out" on their own. Rather than figure it out, companies find much value in buying a contract with an MSP and stepping into the world of managed services. Depending on the IT partner, this can work great or be a massive headache and cause more problems than it's worth.

What is a Healthcare Managed Services Provider?

In the industry of managed service providers, there is a growing subsection of companies like Stringfellow Technology Group that specialize in a field. Getting industry-specific allows companies like ours to apply our industry expertise to more companies that need it. Healthcare managed services differ from regular managed services in that there is a unique need in the healthcare industry for understanding compliance, patient security, HIPAA, and the specific workflows and challenges of a healthcare provider.

HealthSafeIT is our healthcare managed services package from Stringfellow Technology Group. With HealthSafeIT, we built the necessities into the package from the start. We offer the most valuable managed services for healthcare providers to our healthcare partners, allowing them to grow and scale without worrying about building an internal IT team or changing IT providers across different geographical areas.

How is HealthSafeIT Different?

Stringfellow is already wherever you need us to be. We have clients with offices all across the continental US and even support client contractors internationally. We have clients from California up to the Northeast. How we can be in so many places comes from how we've structured our services. Early on, we realized the value of having solid cloud-managed services and capabilities to offer our IT partners. We use the best technology solutions and are experts at setup, maintenance, configuration, and deployment. In addition, we bring a security profile and productivity approach that ensures your company is the most efficient and secure it can be. This approach to healthcare managed services is what we call HealthSafeIT, and it's changing how small healthcare practices grow and expand beyond their local market.

The specific needs of healthcare managed services vary from company to company and region to region. Still, in our experience and with the breadth and depth of our expertise, the IT roadmap we build and follow with our healthcare partners is big enough to include every scenario we've encountered. HealthSafeIT is your one-stop healthcare solution managed services for your growing healthcare practice. Signing up gives you everything your company needs to deliver top-quality patient care to multiple geographic areas securely.

A Massive Success Story

We have a wide range of success stories on our Case Studies page on HealthSafeIT.com, but I will highlight one specific story that outlines what a successful partnership can look like. Pre-covid, we worked with a healthcare group opening clinics across the Midwest. Through our partnership, we created a clinic model that made it easy for us to help them open up new locations across the territory they wanted to expand into. Because of the large team we brought this company, they grew to over 350 employees and became a leading healthcare provider in 3 states in the Midwest.

Our expertise and the gear accelerated the growth we helped deploy at every new clinic. They didn't have to think about decisions and consider different options for how they would be able to open up a new clinic; instead, they already had a partner who supported them in the new area and was able to move quicker than their competitors and bring better healthcare to new areas faster. Because of this agility, they grew to 18 locations in 3 years. They continue to thrive in successful markets that were out of reach to many of their competitors who were scrambling to find local IT partners or motivate their internal IT team to get strategic about growth.

Next Steps

We are already strategic about growth and have a track record to prove it. If you have your sights set on changing the healthcare landscape and improving patient outcomes above and beyond your local area, you have found the best partner in your growth and expansion in HealthSafeIT. Reach out to me or any of our sales team members, and we will be happy to help you make the best decision you've made regarding the technology backbone of your healthcare practice.