Financial Pressures
NHS Organisations are under extreme pressure to reduce costs. For example, the health service in England was asked to save £20bn between 2012 and 2015. Payment by Results has also been introduced to reward efficiency and quality.
As a result, it is now vital for healthcare organisations to improve their operational efficiency and embrace new technologies.
Soaring Demand
The NHS is currently facing soaring demand as a result of an ageing population that requires increased care and support. NHS organisations are struggling to deal with this. In 2015, a number of hospitals in Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Gloucestershire and surrey declared “major incidents”, and A&E performance in England is at its lowest level for a decade
One solution to this is to move operational processes, such as clinical coding, to external providers, enabling NHS organisations to concentrate more fully on caring for their patients.
Cyber Security
Cyber Security in healthcare is becoming an increasingly important issue. This is a result of the national drive to move towards a paperless NHS combined with the increased use of internet portals, clinical portals, telemedicine and virtual online clinics.
Healthcare organisations need to be able to understand and reduce their information security risks, and assure and secure their information governance of electronic data, records and information.