The Ultimate Guide to Managed IT for Healthcare

The advancement in medical technology–from the betterment of surgical techniques to the invention of new devices–has long been advantageous to the healthcare industry. Through the years, it has helped increase the life expectancy of patients in care. But to maintain its functionality, reliable IT is called for.  

A healthcare MSP ensures that communication between healthcare providers is intact and machines work correctly by taking care of your business network while you take care of the patients. 

Along with the improvement in the quality of patient care, a robust IT also enhances work productivity and effectiveness by:  

• Automating records 
  Instead of a conventional and manual record-keeping process, technology helps medical practitioners collect, store, and retrieve patient data with ease through a comprehensive Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. This allows easy access to the database across different healthcare settings and helps avoid documentation problems.  
• Reducing errors  
  Errors are inevitable. However, one mistake could cost you a precious life in this industry. Having the proper support helps you avoid that. 
  
  A reliable IT Service Provider ensures that your organization is equipped to run devices, including the input and verification of codes. Thus, leading to fewer medical errors. Reduced errors mean better patient outcomes. 
  
  
• Allowing seamless collaboration 
  When your network is working correctly, communication between healthcare workers is uninterrupted, and everyone will be able to access information when needed. This makes way for your team to provide the best possible patient care. 

The right Healthcare MSP can save you money and time. Implementing new technologies in your system can streamline your business processes, cut costs by a large margin, improve turnaround time, and significantly lessen downtime.  

As mentioned above, you can also work more efficiently by automating repetitive tasks. This saves you time by focusing on essential functions like patient care and safety rather than filing and organizing charts and doing other manual tasks. Virtual consultations also let doctors see more patients in the same timeframe than face-to-face appointments. 

This eventually results in lower healthcare costs, higher profit, and a better customer experience.   

Healthcare providers hold sensitive patient data, so protecting their network from any risk is crucial.  

 Two possible dangers await your business, cybersecurity and physical risk, and a Healthcare MSP can help protect you from both. 

Once you learn and understand your environment and the risks, you will better know how to protect your organization. The NIST CSF provides a comprehensive look at information security, which you can access anytime. However, healthcare organizations need a partner with the tools to implement it efficiently and effectively. 

A healthcare MSP secures your network by developing suitable cybersecurity solutions, which are fully compliant with government regulations, for your IT infrastructure. These solutions will help protect your equipment investments and ensure health care records' privacy.

In addition, a healthcare MSP can also help you adhere to HIPAA requirements by making sure your cybersecurity lives up to the regulatory standards.

If a natural calamity occurs or a fire breaks out, IT Service Providers can recover lost files without much difficulty with a comprehensive Disaster Recovery (DR) Plan. 

The plan includes:

• An alternative communication plan in case telephones and emails are inaccessible,
• A list of disaster recovery sites,
• Response procedures,
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO), and
• Hardware and software inventory, among others. 

Read “9 Ways to Build a Reliable IT Disaster Recovery Plan.” 

Service time is the amount of time dedicated to conversations between you and your MSP with the goal of fixing a problem or concern in your IT infrastructure.  

An MSP provides different kinds of support, and as a business owner, you need to figure out the amount of service time required for your company. To do that, answer the following questions: 

• How big is your IT network (number of users, workstations, servers)? 
• Do you just need proactive maintenance and support? 
• Do you need to have after-hours and weekend support? 
• Is your business’ IT system running around the clock? 
• Do your usual IT problems take a long time to fix?  
• Do you have recurring IT issues or, are they usually a one-time problem?  

 The price range for service time:  

Service time can be billed hourly or be a recurring cost. If you’ve hired a break-fix company instead of an MSP, you’re most likely on an hourly rate. The price ranges from $150 to $250 per hour but can go up or down depending on the company you’ve hired.  

Managed IT Service Providers will include service time in the plan that you got with them. Plans can range from $50 to $150 per user per month, with other fees depending on what your IT infrastructure needs. 

Make sure you check how much time is allotted for service in your plan and evaluate if that is enough for your needs.

More users mean more devices to manage, which means a higher price point. To have an idea of the cost, you should do an inventory of how many workstations you want your MSP to manage. 

The Price range for each user:  

The price range for each user depends on what you’ll have managed. Perhaps you want to set up a VoIP (Voice Online Internet Protocol) or upgrade your workstations. You might even want to install business internet instead and have mobile device management.  

You can expect to spend $50 to $400 per user.  You’d also need to coordinate if your fees are one-time payments or if they’ll recur each month.  

The number of servers can dramatically affect the price of support. Just like an increase in the number of users will cause an increase in the price, having more servers will cause the price to go up as well.  

You’ll also have to figure out if you want your MSP to simply manage the server or include other important features for data security, such as different kinds of backups. If you don’t have a server, your MSP will recommend you get one, as having a server is essential for most companies with data.  

The Price range for a server:  

You can expect to spend as low as $5000 to over $20000 to set up everything you need for one server. As usual, the cost for a server can go up or down depending on the kind of equipment you choose to invest in.  

MSPs usually provide a much lower upfront price for servers, with the pay-off of having a monthly fee for the time that you use the server.  For example, at ITS, our cloud servers start at $185 per month, while a Backup and Data Recovery (BDR) server will start at $200 per month. Other MSPs will also have price ranges between $200 - $500.  

When looking into the pricing of an MSP, you also need to review how much data you want your MSP to manage and backup. Like users and servers, more data requires more equipment which then requires more management and a higher fee.  

Data needs to be managed because many issues like cybercrimes, faulty equipment or software, or human errors come up that can affect your data’s accessibility. You need to ensure the security of your company’s network, and prepare in case you lose it.  

But while retaining backups sounds great, it can get quite costly to have all the data storage needed for your backups and your regularly used data storage. 

The Price range for data storage:  

You can expect to spend anywhere between $5 per month (for directly bought cloud storage with no maintenance) to $500 (for maintained data storage with backups). Your price will also vary depending on the company you’re coordinating with.  

After taking the previous four factors into consideration, you will also need to review what kind of service you need from your MSP.

Will you be working with them to improve your network’s security?

Are you going to ask them to set up your entire IT infrastructure?

Will you need cloud services or VoIP services?  

And after you decide which services you want from your MSP, there is also an onboarding process your company needs to undergo (especially if you’ve asked for managed IT).  

Then once everything is set up, you will need to consider technological upgrades. For example, the world has shifted from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and is about to transition into Windows 11. Eventually, you will need to replace your computer or server with newer technology to adapt.

Additionally, you will need to adhere to changes in government regulations like HIPAA and CMMC. Recently, the CMMC released more stringent guidelines to follow for businesses. In the future, you can expect and prepare for several modifications to ensure up-to-date cybersecurity.

Read: "Everything You Need to Know About Managed IT".

The Price range for services & upgrades:   

The price range for services will vary wildly. You can expect to spend anywhere between $50 per month to $1000 per month, depending on the size of your company and the services you need. These costs can, of course, go up if your company has a lot of users or has specific, intensive service needs. 

A lot of money goes into excellent technology management, as in this year alone, businesses will spend a staggering $4.2 billion in 2021 on technology. This is at a 9% growth rate from 2020.