If you are a pathology group or any healthcare provider group for that matter, how would you rate the effectiveness of your software vendor on needed updates? Are you seeing quick turnarounds (days or weeks) on needed functionality changes or is it more of a six month to a year version roll-out scenario? What impact do you have as a client on these changes and timing of the needed updates?
One more question might be interesting to ask in relation to the questions above – does your vendor have a traditional software model or are they a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company? We’ve published several posts over the past year on the benefits of the SaaS model. One that you may find helpful is SaaS, Healthcare IT and customization. In it, one of the benefits listed is frequent updates. In the ever evolving healthcare environment of today and tomorrow where we continue to drive closer to a highly collaborative and real-time environment, your software systems will have to change in rapid intervals. The SaaS model is designed to cost effectively support this type of environment. Now, with that said, not all SaaS vendors are created equally. So, start asking your software vendors what their strategy is related to system updates and how they plan to cost effectively support your changing needs. It may be worth matching that up with a few other vendor responses. You may be surprised with the findings…
If you’ve already been asking these questions, please share what you are hearing.