As technology continues to advance, the healthcare industry is rapidly evolving to keep pace with the growing demands of patients and providers. In response to this trend, we developed the Health IT Services Special Item Number (SIN) on the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS), an innovative solution that provides agencies at all levels with access to a wide range of health IT services.
Health IT is the use of computer hardware, software, or infrastructure to record, store, protect, and retrieve clinical, administrative, or financial information. It’s a critical factor in improving the quality of healthcare, preventing medical errors, protecting data, increasing administrative efficiencies, and decreasing the need for paperwork.
This blog post is part of a series where we’re discussing each of GSA’s key IT Services SINs on the GSA Multiple Award Schedule. Each blog will discuss the benefits for agencies in using the solution, take a look at who is using it, and share an example of how an agency successfully used the SIN to achieve its mission.
Benefits of the Health IT Services SIN:
- Improved patient outcomes: Provides agencies with access to cutting-edge health IT solutions that can improve patient outcomes by streamlining healthcare delivery and facilitating more efficient communication between healthcare providers.
- Faster procurements: Does the heavy lifting upfront to offer agencies a streamlined procurement process to find solutions to manage their health IT needs quickly and efficiently. Buying through MAS simplifies the procurement process by providing access to pre-vetted, qualified contractors who can fulfill the agency’s requirements.
- Improved security: Provides access to health IT solutions that are compliant with federal regulations and industry standards, ensuring that patient data is secure and protected.
- Wide range of solutions: Open access to a broad range of health IT services, including electronic health records, health information exchanges, and telehealth solutions. These solutions can help agencies to improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes.
- Cost savings: Helps agencies save money by eliminating the need for extensive market research and evaluation of potential contractors. Additionally, the solution’s pre-negotiated pricing ensures that agencies receive the best value for their purchases.
Top agencies
Agencies invested more than $750 million through the Health IT Services SIN last year. Here are some of our biggest users:
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- Department of Agriculture
- Department of the Interior
- Department of the Air Force
Use Case: Health IT Services SIN modernizes Southeast hospitals
An agency was looking to modernize some of its hospitals in the Southeastern part of the United States as a “test case” for possible expansion across the whole country. Through the Health IT Services SIN, they instituted major changes at 10 pilot hospitals in their system.
They used the SIN to deliver connected health services between hospitals, share electronic health records and information, and also to provide new health informatics and emerging health IT research resources between doctors and nurses.
This allowed the patients in these 10 hospitals — more than 5,000 patients total — to receive the highest quality and well-informed care because their healthcare providers had access to the latest healthcare information in the most secure, efficient and effective way possible. It also enabled the agency to test out new emerging health IT research and systems for further analysis for possible development in the future.
The final outcome of the pilot was better and more efficient care for patients and more efficient healthcare systems for doctors and nurses providing state-of-the-art care.
Transforming government healthcare delivery
The Health IT Services SIN is an innovative solution that can help federal, state, local, and tribal agencies improve healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. As demonstrated by the top ten agencies using this technology, Health IT Services SIN is a proven solution that can be implemented successfully in a wide range of government healthcare settings.
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