In a recent market survey performed by Bradley Durham, more than 1,000 health IT executives were surveyed to find out what their most pressing needs were with regard to contract and contingent staffing.
The results of the survey spoke loud and clear. There’s a gaping hole in the market that these professionals are desperate to fill. Before we reveal the single, biggest takeaway from the study, here’s a little background:
Baseline Industry Data
According to the survey, about 85% of hospitals use up to 15 contract consultants each year. These consultants are brought on primarily to provide special expertise with critical projects, or extra bandwidth to overwhelmed IT departments.
Of the organizations that reported the use of health IT consultants, about 95% of them are leveraging more than one firm to fill their needs. This fact isn’t surprising, given that many firms can be highly specialized, delivering a certain type of resource that others can’t.
Having multiple firms to fill needs also makes sense from a pure bottom-line perspective. It’s always a good double-check to ensure you’re getting the best value from your consulting partners.
A Surprising VMS Statistic
According to a lot of other research we’ve seen, the use of vendor management systems (VMS) is a growing trend in healthcare.
Given the perceived prevalence of VMSs in the market, we were astonished to find that 68% of respondents either didn’t use a VMS or didn’t know if their organization used one.
Of the respondents who did report the use of a VMS, 67% weren’t impressed with its ability to deliver suitable candidates, which naturally leads us to the single biggest discovery that the survey results revealed.
Tell us what you really want
Two questions from the survey zeroed in on the single biggest pain point leaders and executives are struggling to resolve when searching for consulting resources for their health IT projects.
The first question fairly obviously asked, ‘What trait do you find most valuable in health IT consulting firms?’
Respondents were given the options of price, quality, speed, and quantity. Overwhelmingly, the answer was quality. The survey defined quality as ‘the delivery of consulting resources with the most experience or ability.’ A whopping 93% of respondents expressed this as their number one need.
The fact that industry executives value quality is hardly surprising, but the next question is what gave us the greatest insight.
When asked which of the previously listed traits was the hardest to find in the health it consulting market, 60% also said that quality was the most difficult to get.
It was extremely interesting that the one thing that health it execs wanted most was the hardest for them to find.
Where do We Stack Up?
Once we learned what the market was missing, we just had to know; ‘How do our services really fit this market need?’
We conducted a quick survey of our own, asking clients all sorts of questions, but the most important for us to discover was how we were doing at solving the quality problem.
Turns out that among our customers, old and new, 75% say that quality and customer service were the reason they choose to use us over other vendors.
Other data revealed that we have 100% customer satisfaction, with a 96% success rate for consulting resources that we place.
Where Do You Turn for Consultants?
In just about every organization there’s going to be a need for a handful of consultants every year to help meet critical deadlines, solve complex problems, and serve up valuable knowledge and expertise.
We really pride ourselves on the ability to source and place the finest consultants available and get them productive on your project really quickly. We’d love to have a shot at your next big project, so if you’d like to start a conversation about what you have coming up, please fill out the form on this page or just give us a call at 1 (866) 981-1095.
We look forward to serving you.
