Cardiovascular Business (02/22/12) Mary Tierney

Staffing shortages have overtaken concerns about lack of adequate financial support as the top barrier to implementing information technology, according to the latest Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society leadership survey. The results include the input of 302 health care IT professionals who represent more than 600 U.S. hospitals.

The top IT staffing need listed in the survey is clinical application support—followed by network and architecture support, clinical informatics, system integration, IT security, clinical transformation, database administration, PC and server support, process and workflow, and system design and implementation. Approximately 61% of the health IT leaders surveyed expect to increase their staff in 2012