An Independent INFRAM Assessment is Genius. Here’s Why.
Good solid IT infrastructure is the foundation for current and future stability, lower costs and efficient operations. When infrastructure supporting the hospital falls short, the EMR is slow to respond and frustrating to use. Outages imperil every department’s ability to carry on. An under-performing network impairs mobility and patient experience initiatives. Not to mention the cybersecurity risks.
Moreover, physicians and staff have a history of blaming the application and of course IT – but often infrastructure is the culprit. The HIMSS INFRAM Assessment by an independent firm is a golden opportunity for a structured approach to evaluate current infrastructure, its ability to support future workloads, comparisons versus peers and a road-map for planning and budgeting.
What Is an INFRAM Assessment?
HIMSS Analytics has various maturity frameworks that help healthcare organizations globally get the most from their technology investments. For example, since 2005 EMRAM, the Electronic Medical Records Adoption Model, successfully provided a methodology and algorithms to score hospitals relative to their Electronic Medical Records (EMR) progress and impact.
Now we have INFRAM – the Infrastructure Adoption Model. Because everything now is digital and the volume of data and images is increasing astronomically, infrastructure really does matter for patient care, patient experience, all hospital functions, and risk management. But making infrastructure improvements and changes is challenging without a systematic plan. This is where INFRAM provides much-needed strategic direction that impacts the entire organization.
What Does the INFRAM Assessment Include?
The HIMSS Analytics Infrastructure Adoption Model (INFRAM) provides a path to assessing and mapping technology infrastructure within legacy systems and translates results into weaknesses or strengths for deployment of future systems. INFRAM is comprehensive. There are 5 infrastructure capabilities that are reviewed and assessed via surveys to meet industry benchmarks and standards:
- Data Center Solutions
- Mobility
- Security
- Collaboration
- Transport
A detailed report is presented by the team to leadership at your site. The report provides an objective, actionable picture of your environment’s maturity and how it compares to peers to support patient care, a healthier bottom line, and clinical workers.
Thus, weaknesses that would cause failures upon launch or issues with day-to-day operations are identified and can be eliminated. Most importantly, the INFRAM Assessment provides you with a roadmap to digital transformation.
Comport understands that healthcare organizations often lack the budget they need to make sweeping changes. With this in mind, we will offer information to leverage IT consumption models that allow you to control costs with pay-as-you-go models, as well as help with technology and cloud transitions. This way you can make changes that impact your technology future without suffering a large upfront investment.
What Is the Cost of INFRAM Assessment?
Let’s get down to the details. An independent INFRAM Assessment can weigh down your pocketbook (approx. $35,000) but here’s the good news…for those who meet baseline qualifications the INFRAM Assessment is free.
How can we do this? Comport realized that we were in the position to work with our technology partners to offset your costs. This is a win-win with no obligation. Keep in mind that we have a limited number of free INFRAM Assessments – so raise your hand early.
Benefits of INFRAM
The Assessment has helped health organizations benchmark and ensure that they are meeting standards in healthcare IT Solutions. Consider the following benefits of INFRAM:
- Confirm your data is independent – and accurate.
- Assess systems and infrastructure to capture data and benchmark capabilities against other healthcare organizations.
- Provides a roadmap from current state to meet HIMSS Analytics recommendations.
- Creates a business case for shareholders including Finance as a vehicle for a mutual understanding and buy-in for a master technology plan.
- Prioritizes actions to take advantage of newer technology that streamlines, is easier to manage and reduces power, footprint and cost.
- Evaluating the key infrastructure domains including mobility, collaboration, transport, security, and data center gives leaders an opportunity to learn the dependencies of domain interactions and what needs to happen to achieve the best results.
- Trying to do this alone can take weeks and weeks of planning, rescheduling, etc. and at the end you may not have all the information.
Who Will Perform Your Independent INFRAM Assessment?
Comport works with an independent team certified by HIMSS Analytics. This highly respected team has performed the majority of INFRAM Assessments completed to date. They have evolved an efficient three-step process that moves along smoothly. Upon acceptance into our INFRAM Assessment program, we will make your introductions to the team and they take over.
Using the HIMSS Analytics INFRAM Standards, this independent team relies on its proven methodologies. These methodologies apply the standards of INFRAM in a digestible, accessible means.
Request Your INFRAM Assessment
Your patients depend on your organization for top-quality care, and like any other business on the planet, your current and future success depends on IT capabilities.
To discuss your INFRAM Assessment please contact Geoff Bakeman, VP Healthcare, Comport Healthcare Solutions. Geoff.bakeman@comport.com
Author: Bill Flatley, Field CTO for Healthcare
Bill is responsible for technical strategies and recommendations for Comport’s Healthcare clients. His extensive experience includes four healthcare systems in leadership roles supporting Clinical Applications, Digital Health, and Office of the CIO as the primary liaison between IT and the business.
