What Factors Are Driving Telecommunications Costs in Healthcare
As a healthcare professional, you are keenly aware that many factors impact and drive the costs of healthcare delivery. One of the major drivers for the increase in healthcare costs has been and is the federal government. This has been the case since our federal government became a healthcare payer with the advent of Medicare. Since that time, multiple programs and various mandates – many unfunded – have driven up the costs of healthcare delivery. One of the latest is HIPAA; this broad act covers many areas of healthcare, but security is the one that has required healthcare providers and telecommunications vendors who serve that marketplace to increase their expenditures to meet various tenants of this law.
Security and patient privacy are good things, but meeting the encryption directives of this law has driven up the telecommunications cost for every healthcare communication, be they normal care messages or critical alert messaging, the costs have escalated significantly. The mandates regarding message response capabilities for auditing, tracking and responding to messages have also been affected. Meeting these regulations has driven up the costs of the telecommunications systems that healthcare providers must use to communicate on a daily basis.
HIPAA has also impinged on patient safety, and in many cases, it has improved the care delivery process by enhancing the care delivery communications providers must use today. Responses to critical messages and escalation schemes to ensure these messages are delivered and responded to have improved patient safety. However, these regulations like the security encryption mandates have significantly driven up the costs of healthcare telecommunications.