Diagnose Your Health Care Practice With 5 Questions

There's a pretty easy way to determine the strength of your health care practice, and that’s by answering the following questions: Are you making money on health care deals and is that money more or less than what it was a quarter, a year or two years ago?

But health care, as a vertical industry and an opportunity, isn't always that simple, and solution providers that have had continued success in the space have done so because they made decisions about how to bulk up their health care IT practices for the long haul. With much ado about health care IT for now and for the foreseeable future, it’s time for a reality check on the strength of your health care practice.

Question No. 1: Are You A Generalist Or A Specialist?

Many solution providers who have had success in health care IT say the most important choice they made in recent years was to invest specifically in their health care practice, meaning dedicated resources and specialized training. It may be enough to approach health care as a generalist if all you’re doing is basic integration and box sales, but the big health care IT wins go to those with dedicated, deeply knowledgeable health care teams, solutions providers said.

Global Technology Resources Inc. (GTRI), a Denver-based solution provider and integrator, is among those solution providers that recently reorganized and launched a dedicated healthcare practice.

’There are now dedicated resources where before there used to be like a dotted-line organization,’ said Charlie Franco, GTRI’s director of business development. ’But what that’s allowed us to do is make geographic changes and move resources around the country to handle areas better. You have to go from a dotted-line organization to a dedicated team. That builds credibility.’

James Marsh, senior vice president of Carousel Industries, an Exeter, RI-based solution provider, said that creating a dedicated health care team is one of Carousel’s priorities. Carousel has plenty of health care customers already, Marsh said, but he isn’t sure the solution provider is yet realizing its full potential in the market.

’We’ve been very good generalists for our health care client base, but we need more focus,’ Marsh said. ’It’s a huge opportunity, and it’s something we’ve been talking about for a long time. There’s a lot of money they’re sitting on.’

Question No. 2: How’s Your Stimulus Capture?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the federal stimulus, helped opened the floodgates on a new wave of health care opportunity in the channel thanks to a focus on two goals: achieved by 2015 driving adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) systems and ensuring patient data is actively and securely exchanged among doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. At the physician practice level, where many regional VARs find the richest integration opportunities, physicians that can prove they have a meaningfully useful EMR system in place can receive up to $64,000 in incentives.

But with the first round of stimulus incentives already flowing– it began in October 2010 and continues through Sept. 30, 2012 – have solution providers that didn’t lock up health care integration business already missed the boat? It depends, said channel executives.

’It may be too late in some cases, but there is still opportunity,’ said Michael Houghton, vice president, vertical market solutions for Avnet. ’The stimulus will be going on for five years, and that’s a pretty big window. Health care customers are still looking for assistance.’

NEXT: Not Just About Stimulus

Avnet is among distributors with dedicated health care channel training and enablement programs, and enrollment in its HealthPath has grown substantially since the dawn of the stimulus, Houghton said. Part of the HealthPath training is a HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, part of ARRA) assessment tool that solution providers can take to customers and examine how to upgrade their infrastructure, keeping stimulus opportunities in mind.

’We tailor every single one of our engagements because the reality is, we need to make sure we’re supporting their [VARs’] go-to-market strategy," Houghton said.

Houghton and other executives advised seeking out distributors, vendors and other sources for help understanding stimulus funding and how to translate cumbersome regulation and hearsay opportunity into actual closed deals.

It isn’t just about stimulus, though. Once EMR systems are implemented, health care IT organizations will still need the back-end infrastructure needed to support them, and those demands are rapidly changing the ways VARs think about design criteria, too. Wireless networking is a perfect example.

’They have to beef up the networking. They have to,’ said Dennis Holmes, mobility practice manager for Internetwork Engineering, a Charlotte, N.C.-based wireless specialist, discussing hospital infrastructure needs. ’Every application vendor has software that’s going to have to run on a mobile device. Folks are going to build bigger, stronger boxes, and we’re pushing out 802.11n speeds. They’re no longer dealing with 100 clients in a hospital. They’re dealing with 10,000 clients in a hospital.’

Question No. 3: Do You Have A Health Care Specialty?

Trying to be a jack of all trades in health care is a fool’s errand, said solution providers. Healthcare IT is a vast and cumbersome space, and everything from long-term care to pharmaceuticals to wireless to data center is worthy of a specialty. C.J. Ezell found that out pretty quickly, and made a killing because of it.

Ezell, president of The ASI Group, a Mobile, Ala.-based solution provider, converted his business from primarily a break-fix shop to a health care specialty integrator in 2004. And not only that, but a solution provider focused on dental practices.

’Dental is one of the few areas in health care that does have its act together,’ said Ezell, who recently sold ASI to dental IT giant Henry Schein. ’EMR in general is a term that’s fairly new, but dentists have been using EMR systems for 15 years. The average dentist uses a lot of technology, and the average dental practice cannot function without technology. We focused on that segment because we saw the most opportunity there.’

Newcomers or beginners to the market should realize that being a healthcare generalist sounds appealing, but in fact limits your appeal to customers, he said.

’This is a very fragmented market and it’s not a one-size-fits-all market,’ Ezell said. ’It has so many bit players in it, and even though they’re all in this overarching field of health care, they all have their own specific needs. Make sure you know the way. If you’re just trying to come in and say, ’I do health care,’ you’re going to spin your wheels.’

NEXT: How Well Do You Know Workflow?

Question No. 4: How Well Do You Know Your Health Care Customer?

In health care settings, day-to-day life is about workflow: the bustle of doctors, nurses and assistants, a phone that doesn’t stop ringing, infrastructure that has to be as fail-safe as possible and critical decisions made often in the span of seconds. You can’t sell into that effectively if you don’t understand it, VARs said.

’I spent a lot of time talking to dentists and talking to service technicians that worked in dental, to try to get a sense of what their workflow was,’ Ezell explained of his early health care opportunities. ’All health care providers have their own little lingo. I had to learn what some of those words meant and how it relates to what they do every day. That helped more than anything.’

It also pays to understand, especially in larger health care organizations, that the needs of different departments – from billing to PACS to radiology – are all different, and it often falls upon the solution provider to connect those many strands when designing an overall solution.

’If you look at how the industry’s divided, you have trusted partners on each side: you have clinicians and hospitals who turn to their EMR companies, and then you have people who turn to their IT people,’ said GTRI’s Franco. ’I think that’s what makes our position unique, because we can bring those sides together and say what’s the long term vision of the hospital and who’s helping.’

With so much competition for health care business, that breadth gives GTRI an edge, he said.

’What we’re doing is combining two types of resources: an IT background and a clinical background,’ Franco said. ’You can’t survive just being an integrator.’

Question No 5: Do You Have Good Word-of-Mouth?

For all of its vastness, health care is and remains a relationships business. And unlike in other business sectors where competitive companies don’t compare notes and don’t swap tips, health care CIOs are quick to make – and just as soon break – the reputations of their IT consultants based on how satisfied they are.

’CIOs and hospitals compete, but they also talk to each other at HIMSS and elsewhere,’ said Internetwork Engineering’s Holmes. ’Once they know you, you can take their business and run with it, and add projects effectively. There’s a lot to word-of-mouth spread in this industry.’

John Convery, executive vice president of vendor relations and marketing for Denali Advanced Integration, a Redmond, Wash.-based solution provider, said Denali has been able to grow its health care footprint based on the high touch it can bring to hospitals and other health care clients in the northwest.

’You can’t build this business just on credit,’ Convery said. ’Having a customer base, a case study is important. A referral is huge. We’ve got hundreds of folks working on these things. It’s not always the product that wins the battle. It’s not SKUs and it’s not products. It’s services and solutions.’