What is more important in healthcare, computers, or nurses and other human beings? Southcoast Health cutting dozens of jobs on heels of expensive IT upgrade

That I even have to ask the question on the title of this post is a tragedy and a scandal.I've written a number of posts on this blog about hospitals laying off staff and even put in financial jeopardy due to EHR implementation, e.g., my June 2, 2014 post "In Fixing Those 9,553 EHR "Issues", Southern Arizona’s Largest Health Network is $28.5 Million In The Red" at http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/06/in-fixing-those-9553-ehr-issues.html and numerous others indexed under "healthcare IT costs" at query link http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/healthcare%20IT%20cost.  This often occurs due to poor project planning, overconfidence, underestimation of complexity and even incompetence, that drives up electronic records system costs way over estimates.  It's happened again:Southcoast Health cutting dozens of jobs on heels of expensive IT upgradeMar 30, 2016, 11:25am EDTUpdated Mar 30, 2016, 11:31am EDThttp://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/health-care/2016/03/southcoast-health-cutting-dozens-of-jobs-on-heels.htmlStung by losses linked to costly technology upgrades, Southcoast Health is laying off 95 employees just a year after finalizing a similar staffing cut.The cuts represent 1 percent of Southcoast’s 7,251 workforce, and will happen across the care provider's three hospitals in Fall River, Wareham and New Bedford. All levels of hospital staff will be affected, officials said.Southcoast employees were notified of the cut Wednesday morning. The cuts come as ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: EPIC healthcare IT cost Keith Hovan Southcoast Health Source Type: blogs