7 Health IT Industry Outlook Report Trends to Watch in 2022

As COVID-19 accelerated demand for more advanced digital health and patient engagement technologies, hospital and health system IT departments shouldered these expectations – rolling out new capabilities in record time, while still balancing daily operational support responsibilities. – Utilizing flexible staffing programs, to address resource gaps and IT catch-up projects, stands as a top-of-mind focus for hospital and health system CIOs, according to Stoltenberg Consulting’s 10th annual Health IT Industry Outlook Survey. “Demand management while juggling multiple IT initiatives” (11%) earned the next highest ranking in IT operational burdens felt by CIOs. Additional IT concerns — “aligning IT with maximizing value-based care reimbursements,” “provider burnout related to EHR burden and inefficiency,” and “IT service failures (i.e. system downtimes or cybersecurity hits)” — all stood below 10%, with the latter two earning half the votes as the previous year. 4. IT spending and mission critical events align: While EHR new version upgrades earned the highest IT spend focus, they also ranked as hospital and health system CIOs’ most recent or near future mission critical event (25%). 5. End-user frustrations causing EHR burnout: For a second year in a row, healthcare CIOs expressed that end users are most frustrated with inefficient system workflow (43%). In second place, IT ticket resolution ineffectiveness grew 10% in votes from last year, impacting over a quarter (27%) of hospital and health system end users in 2022. For a second year in a row, EHR new version upgrades and/or system alignment (43%) took the top spot of where healthcare organizations are investing the most IT dollars. Aligning with this data, within the Health IT Industry Outlook Survey, over a third of U.S. hospital and health system CIOs said that beyond continued COVID-19 recovery, cybersecurity (42%) is the biggest health IT industry focus for the year.