Long term health faces challenges daily. Not just from the pressures of providing excellent care, or unique offerings with medical advances, but the challenges of cost associated with the need for utilizing advanced technology services. On top of needing EHR/EMR, mobile devices, video, HIPPA compliant data storage and many more, healthcare corporations have challenges with the costs associated with these items.
At the recent NIC National Skilled Nursing Conference in Los Angeles in early March, a panelist group spoke on “Short Term Strategies for Dealing with Funding Cuts”. This session was moderated by Richard Herrick with Gene Curcio and Joe Steier as panelists.
In the session, Gene talked about how his company, Consulate Health Care, conducted a comprehensive Telecom Audit with pretty dramatic savings. The audit included local phone service, long distance phone service, conference calling, cell phones and related mobile devices, broadband circuits, phone systems and telecom management. Findings from the audit helped Consulate save $900,000 or 25% of the company’s $3.6 million annual telecom spending. This type of savings not only hits the bottom line, but allows companies to take that savings and invest in the types of technologies needed in healthcare today.
Mobile computing, VoiP, Sip Trunking, MPLS networking, Gb Ethernet, EHR, CRM, Secure Data Storage…etc. all need to be explored by each and every long term healthcare provider with zeal. These new solutions enable faster, better, more efficient and effective ways to reduce costs, redundant movement and bottom line performance.
