For IT executives in large healthcare organizations, compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is, surprisingly enough, last year's business. With HIPAA under control, IT executives are turning to a more pressing issue: how to improve patient care on a tight budget. Jeff Pelot, CTO for 350-bed Denver Health (formerly known as Denver General), has an astounding 120 projects underway. "My biggest challenge is keeping up with what we are doing," he says. Pelot's priorities are creating Web-based access to imaged medical records, providing high-speed access to the medical records department so employees can work from home, and updating his Oracle server back end. Denver Health has invested 8% to 9% of its budget in IT, which has become "a very strategic part of the organization," Pelot says. IDC says that most healthcare organizations only spend about 2% of their budgets on IT, while the average across other industries is about 5%.
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