November 21, 2009
What's Inside:
Heartland outsources some tech services
Heartland Health has announced its intent to outsource some of its technology services to the Cerner Corp. in Kansas City, Mo.
The decision came last week after a six-month review of the medical center’s technology services department’s strategic and operational performance. It will result in Cerner serving as a remote host for Heartland’s electronic medical records.
“The problem is it’s very expensive for hospitals to have these big data centers,” said Charlie Shields, Heartland’s chief marketing/communications officer. “Rather than come up with their own solutions, it’s becoming more common for hospitals to turn to big corporations.”
In addition to offering Heartland improved system performance, this change will provide better security for patient data. Mr. Shields noted that Cerner will house the records in a facility that is guarded 24 hours a day and that is made to withstand almost any natural or man-made
disaster.
The outsourcing will cost $1.5 million over seven years but will allow Heartland to redirect $6 million that it otherwise would have spent on a means for recovering data in case of disaster.
Heartland has eight employees responsible for maintaining the systems that will be housed at Cerner, and has said it will help them secure other employment.
Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.
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I was a transcriptionist for Heartland at one time. They gave our jobs to a company who then gave our jobs to people in India. Way to go Heartland!
Please get your facts straight. Heartland has always had a vendor for the overflow of transcription as long as I have worked there (10+ years). For a very short time it did go to India and that was stopped and we changed vendors. The clinics at one time were restructured and the transcriptionists were given the opportunity to work in the transcription dept. at Heartland. None wanted those positions. The transcriptionists NEVER lost their job and are still there, in fact they are hiring new employees for transcription. So if you lost your job you either were a clinic transcriptionist who did not want to work in the HIS dept and quit or was placed somewhere else. We would LOVE to have more transcriptionists in our dept. to keep as much work in-house rather then send it out. The quality of our work compared to the outside vendors is so much better. So if you are going to bash Heartland at least get some facts straight before saying "transcriptionists lost their jobs" because they never did.
@northend
You validated what missourimomma said in your own post. It doesn't matter how "Short" of a time they outsourced to India they did do it and jobs were lost as a result even if it was for a short time.