How to Maximize ROTI in Healthcare

Healthcare decision makers understand the importance of IT, which can impact operational costs, employee productivity, customer satisfaction, and — ultimately — your bottom line. 

But how do you ensure you get the most out of your IT investment? With 2025 on the horizon, it’s important to start planning for the future and developing strategies to help you maximize the return on technology investment (ROTI).

Understanding ROTI

In healthcare, IT ROI is not only about financial gains, but also improved patient care, operational efficiency, and compliance with regulatory standards. Measuring IT success involves assessing tangible benefits, such as cost savings, revenue generation, and intangible benefits such as enhanced patient satisfaction and streamlined processes.

There are two major challenges to calculating the ROTI. 

First, IT is tasked with preventing things like operational disruptions and security breaches. But how do you gauge the ROI of preventing a data breach? What is the value of the system not going down? Understanding ROTI means factoring in the value of prevention, which can be tricky.

Second, IT leaders are drowning in metrics, which can lead to confusion or even conflicting insights. It’s important for leadership to align on which metrics are most important in measuring the performance of IT. 

Executives often focus on the bottom line of an investment to determine ROI — how much will a new system or initiative generate in new revenue? When it comes to IT, the question of value becomes more complex. The value is not intangible, but it can be hard to quantify, especially when compared to how executives traditionally evaluate investment.

“Output and results are key to decision makers, but evaluation the ROI of your IT team can be challenging. At ISG, we help executives define to their IT leaders what success should look like by establishing a base of standards that are measurable and repeatable.”
– Ben Foster, CEO of ISG Technology

Challenges Faced by Small IT Teams

Understanding your organization’s needs helps you to make wise decisions and maximize the value of your IT investment. Many healthcare organizations have fairly limited IT teams that often face a wide range of responsibilities, including technical support for staff, working with and coordinating with outside vendors, ensuring cybersecurity, and keeping systems up to date.

It is absolutely critical that small IT teams maximize their current IT resources. Understanding what you have in terms of technology and skills can help you see what you might need. As organizations grow, needs and demands will change. Identifying these challenges can help ensure that you get the most bang for your buck when investing in technology with an eye toward the future.

Here are some common challenges faced by small IT teams:

• Limited Resources: Small teams might lack the people and technical resources to manage complex IT systems — this could lead to delays, potential downtimes, and HIPAA non-compliance. 
• Skill Gaps: Small or even single-person IT teams might not have the specialized skills to handle diverse IT challenges, such as cybersecurity threats or advanced data analytics. Simply put, with a limited team you’re limited to the expertise — or lack thereof — of those individuals.
• High Workload: The onus of managing multiple IT responsibilities can lead to burnout and decreased efficiency. An overwhelmed team might take shortcuts, leading to mistakes that negatively impact IT performance.
• Scalability Issues: Small teams may struggle to scale IT operations in response to growing organizational needs, limiting the ability to adopt new technologies. Essentially, this can prevent an organization from having the foundation needed to truly grow and expand.

Outsourcing is Key to Maximizing ROTI

For healthcare leaders, maximizing ROTI often means doing more with less. Decision makers can alleviate pressure on IT teams through automation and other technological enhancements. They can also invest in managed or co-managed IT services to supplement and complement an overburdened in-house team. 

To improve your ROTI, determine whether your IT team is using current staff to the best of their abilities. Are they bogged down with tasks that prevent innovation? By answering these questions, you can uncover opportunities to augment IT with co-managed services.

Leverage Co-Managed IT Services

Internal IT teams can have understandable concerns that managed or co-managed IT will make their jobs obsolete. However, the right IT partner allows IT teams to be more strategic, focus on the work they actually want to be doing, and act as a true partner to their business. Here’s how:

• Cost Efficiency: Co-managed IT services can reduce the need for or augment your in-house IT staff, lower operational costs, and help you stay current with the latest technology.
• Scalability: Co-managed services allow healthcare organizations to scale their IT resources based on demand and adjust staffing and expertise levels as their organizations grow and evolve. This can be particularly beneficial in handling fluctuating patient volumes.
• Security and Compliance: Co-managed IT services ensure healthcare organizations stay current with regulations such as HIPAA — safeguarding patient data and avoiding costly breaches.

In-House vs. Managed vs. Co-Managed IT Services

Should you keep your IT services solely in-house, or would you be better served with some measure of managed IT support? It’s an essential question for any executive seeking to maximize ROTI. Each option has its pros and cons:

	In-House IT	Managed IT	Co-Managed IT
Cost	Predictable costs that can be controlled as part of the budgetary process. Less cost flexibility due to salaries, benefits, and commitments to employees.	Costs must be negotiated. Although costs are flexible, they can be less predictable, particularly if unexpected events occur.	Co-managed IT services generally cost less than fully managed IT solutions. Although communication between internal staff and external services can add some cost.
Expertise	Skills are limited to that of the in-house team.	Provides a greater range of skills based on client needs.	Co-managed IT leverages both in-house expertise and external specialists. It is important to have defined roles between internal and external teams.
Scalability	Staffing changes might be required to scale and respond to changing needs.	Often more scalable depending on the vendor. However, scaling might  increase costs from original negotiated contracts.	Co-managed solutions provide adaptable IT support that can be scaled up or down based on changing needs.
Availability	Staff available during regular business hours. Most organizations have a staff member on-call. Staff are solely focused on your organization’s needs.	24/7 support to ensure minimal disruptions. However, you likely are one client of many which may lead to less direct focus on your organization’s needs.	With internal and external teams, there’s often better coverage and availability for IT support.

Maximizing Your Investment

Maximizing your ROI in healthcare requires a strategic approach. First you have to understand the challenges your IT team might be facing, then you have to set benchmarks that can help you measure the ROI of your implemented technology. A crucial element of this process is being a partner with your IT team and helping them get the most out of the resources they have. You will see the gaps that are left and can help devise a solution to fill those gaps, positioning your team for success and building the foundation to fuel organizational growth.

Ultimately, it’s essential to address the potential inefficiencies of small teams. One option is to leverage in-house, managed, and co-managed IT services. This can help you streamline operations, allow you to invest in staff development, and conduct thorough cost analyses.

Learn more about maximizing the ROI of IT.