Revenue Cycle Insider

Question: Our IT team mentioned technical debt in a town hall recently. What is technical debt and how does it pertain to healthcare?

Michigan Subscriber

Answer: Technical debt is the buildup of outdated equipment, technology, and unaddressed technical issues in your organization. The outdated systems may require upgrades or need to be replaced in order to remain functional, secure, and compliant.

Another way of looking at technical debt is that it’s like a credit card of past technological decisions. Having technical debt is not necessarily a bad thing, unless your organization doesn’t take steps to rectify the issue. According to a 2023 Protiviti survey, approximately 30 percent of an organization’s IT budget is spent on technical debt management.

If a medical practice chooses to postpone the necessary maintenance or delays replacing an obsolete system, then you can face inefficiencies that could cause higher operating costs, safety concerns, and put your practice at risk of a security breach — not to mention lengthy service outages and unforeseen system downtime.

An example of technical debt in healthcare would be having an outdated server storing radiology images, such as X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. If the server isn’t properly patched and updated, or replaced if it’s particularly old, your practice is at risk of having a malicious threat actor gaining unauthorized access to the images or losing them entirely due to a server crash.

One of the questions IT professionals ask the C-suite when budgeting for the new fiscal year is: “Is fixing a legacy system more expensive than replacing it entirely?” No technology is designed to last forever. Eventually, device manufacturers cease updating code and issuing new security patches, which means it is more cost efficient to upgrade the equipment.

Mike Shaughnessy, BA, CPC, Development Editor, AAPC