Overextended staff worries IT pros, survey finds

Overextended staff is among the top concerns of healthcare tech professionals, according to Avaya’s Healthcare Technology Outlook survey, conducted at the 2011 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 20 to Feb 24.

When asked to identify obstacles to providing better patient care, respondents focused mainly on staff issues, Avaya’s survey found. The top answer (32 percent) cited was “overextended clinical staff spending too much time performing non-patient care activities.” This was followed by poor or lack of effective communication among staff and bottlenecks in patient flow.

In addition, healthcare professionals were asked to name the issues that would be most important for their hospital or facility to address in the next three years—considering meaningful use and accountable care organization requirements, according to the Basking Ridge, N.J.-based enterprise communications systems company.

Communication and workflow integration into Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) was ranked as the most important (with 95 percent of respondents saying it was “extremely important” or “very important”), followed by automated patient follow-up and multimodal collaboration.

The survey was hosted by market research firm Exhibit Surveys.

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