In hospital IT we’re seeing a lot of changes happening with how a hospital IT department staffs itself. The past couple years, most hospitals have been busy implementing their EHR. This required them to hire a lot of EHR consulting companies that could scale up their manpower requirements for the implementation. In fact, many of these so called EHR consulting companies were actually just staff augmentation companies dressed as consultants. I even noted that the Healthcare IT Industry was addicted to consultants.
I think over the last 6 or so months, we’ve seen a move away from hiring as many consultants (we still love a good consultant) towards hiring more FTEs in hospital IT. This makes sense. As the EHR product has matured, the manpower needs are more stable and so it makes a lot of sense to hire a full time person to manage the ongoing needs.
We’ve seen that first hand on our healthcare IT job board. There are still some lingering consulting positions that are needed for the remaining EHR implementations, but hospitals are hiring more FTEs. I think this trend will continue for a good while to come.
In fact, we’re seeing a shift in consulting. Many EHR consulting companies are turning into EHR help desks. Others are going after value based reimbursement and healthcare analytics. In some cases, the consulting companies are turning into product companies. In other cases, they’re finally starting to consult.