The 2023 trends forecast for healthcare is rather grim: Kaufman Hall predicts the expense pressure exerted on health systems in 2022, when about half of U.S. hospitals finished the year with a negative margin, will continue. Hospitals aren’t winning many points from patients, either. In Jarrard’s 2023 Consumer Survey, 53% of respondents believe hospitals put profits over patients.
At SureTest, despite the grim forecast, we would argue that now is the time to focus on test automation, as its productivity benefits fully emerge during a period of belt-tightening and beyond.
“The future,” says entrepreneur and environmentalist Paul Hawken, “belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive.”
Fiscal challenges may be daunting, but to follow Hawken’s outlook, they can also provide an opportunity to make improvements to future-proof and strengthen your organization – starting with your staff.
Prioritize Staff Needs
“We expect to see continued cost optimization measures to tackle rising costs, such as increased labor productivity efforts and the application of technological innovation,” says McKinsey in their recent report, “What to Expect in US Healthcare in 2023 and Beyond.”
For senior health IT executives, automating EHR, third-party, and enterprise application testing is one innovation that will improve operational efficiencies while reducing spending.
But where to start?
An early-in-the-COVID-pandemic post from a human resources publication directed employees to develop five critical skills in an atmosphere of doing more with less. One recommendation to employees was to conduct a commitment audit to capture all commitments on one page to guide staff toward understanding what they can and cannot do.
We suspect that “increased manual testing” would appear in the “can’t do” audit results. SureTest’s Managed Test Automation Solution helps reduce your staff’s commitment to manually test your EHR, third-party, and enterprise applications so that they can prioritize other duties and responsibilities crowding their commitment list.
Still, migrating from a manual process to an automated one means change – and change can be challenging. Consider empowering key IT staff members to act as advocates for the test automation process and for their fellow employees navigating the change. They can serve as facilitators and troubleshooters, overcoming roadblocks and smoothing the path forward.
In addition, thoroughly communicating the test automation process to all relevant departments and staff members helps build a more conducive work environment. You can do this with newsletters, lunch and learns, collaborative tools, and FAQs – there is no such thing as over-communicating. It may seem redundant to the change agents themselves, but the staff and related departments may be at various levels of engagement. Reach out to them often, get their feedback, and act on it to smooth the transition as much as possible.
Improve Operational Efficiency
The budget planning process often sets efficiency and cost savings goals, and test automation naturally emerges as a viable solution for achieving these goals. Here is why.
Doing More with Less
Test automation of your EHR, third-party, and enterprise applications helps you stretch your resources further and dramatically improves test quality. It streamlines, removes bottlenecks and delays, and reduces or eliminates the time and energy that manual testing exerts on your staff.
Moreover, manual testing is prone to human error, and the quality of work drops the longer your staff works on it. But with test automation, testing integrity does not depend on whether someone makes a mistake. Test automation is consistent and dependable.
Top-Priority Focus
EHR, third-party, and enterprise applications are the backbone of health IT and are essential for safe and effective healthcare delivery. Without test automation, time-consuming manual processes make it difficult to test as frequently as needed and invite risks that may compromise patient safety.
Manual testing is counterproductive to operational efficiency and can cause negative outcomes that hinder your organization. Test automation allows for faster, more efficient testing and enables your organization to test more thoroughly and continuously.
Ongoing Optimization
Given the very real need to operate at peak efficiency, there is no better time than now to automate health IT system testing. Yet given the repeated updates for all software, this is not a “fix it and forget it” solution.
SureTest’s all-inclusive, managed service solution provides continual script development and maintenance, daily testing, and real-time reporting and dashboards. SureTest’s Test Automation Engineers stay several steps ahead of your scripts, so you are always ready for what comes next.
Embrace Test Automation and Realize True ROI with SureTest
Wading through the competing priorities for 2023 is enough to give any health IT department leader a headache.
Building a test automation framework as part of your 2023 IT strategy can help. Maximize your 2023 investments with a “do more with less” approach, and you are well-positioned to build an organization that, in entrepreneur Paul Hawken’s words, “is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring.”
At SureTest, we can help you do this with a solution that allows your health system to achieve positive ROI in the first year, with a five-year ROI of up to 300%
Unsure about what that might look like? Start with our ROI calculator.
There is no better time to start your EHR test automation journey. Contact us today to learn how.