Before 2020, many healthcare organizations believed that return on investment (ROI) from IT investments could be soft or vague, according to the 2024 Healthcare Provider IT Trends and Priorities report from KLAS Research and Bain & Company. It’s not that ROI wasn’t a priority, but it was difficult to measure and slow to arrive. The COVID-19 pandemic upended all that almost overnight.

Faced with immense operational pressure during the pandemic, healthcare had to move faster, experiment more, and deliver results without the luxury of long timelines. In doing so, leaders started to take a different look at their approach to ROI. The KLAS report found that, today, 59% of healthcare leaders evaluate ROI from IT investments within one to three years, and 29% do so within six to 12 months.

How are healthcare organizations driving speed-to-ROI? Outsourcing has emerged as a foundational key.

Driving Fast ROI in Healthcare IT With Outsourcing

In addition to rapid ROI expectations, healthcare leaders also seek to preserve the agility they gained during the pandemic while finding a middle ground between speed and governance. They want governance to support operational efficiency — not hinder it. Additionally, financial constraints mean every dollar spent must be defensible.

These pressures have shifted how healthcare organizations think about technology partners. ROI is not just about the software itself but about how effectively it’s implemented, managed, and supported over its lifecycle. A dependable IT partner — one that understands healthcare’s regulatory, clinical, and operational realities — can dramatically accelerate time-to-value from new investments. Flexible pricing models help organizations avoid large upfront costs, while healthcare-specific services ensure organizations deploy, configure, and support tools to maximize their use.

Outsourcing also addresses a major challenge for healthcare organizations today: staffing shortages. The KLAS report found that staffing shortages were the highest driver of IT outsourcing, followed by a lack of in-house expertise. With the right partner, organizations are addressing workforce gaps and burnout while continuing to drive innovation. It’s a win-win.

Where Outsourcing Drives the Greatest ROI

Not all IT functions deliver the same return when outsourced. The strongest ROI tends to come from operational areas where reliability, scale, and specialization directly impact cost.

IT Management & Monitoring
Outsourced IT management and monitoring deliver ROI by improving system reliability, security posture, and cost predictability. Continuous monitoring gives organizations more visibility into their IT infrastructure so they can assess its health while also seeing performance trends. This insight helps leaders plan upgrades more strategically to maximize financial investment and avoid unnecessary spend. With fewer disruptions and better planning, organizations gain more control over long-term IT costs.

IT Service Desk
Outsourcing this function improves responsiveness, standardizes support, and reduces ticket backlogs. Faster issue resolution translates directly into productivity gains across the organization, while freeing internal IT resources to focus on higher-value work rather than routine support. Over time, consistent service desk performance also increases user trust in IT — reducing shadow IT and unnecessary workarounds that introduce risk and cost.

Clinical Service Desk
When healthcare organizations outsource clinical service desk to healthcare-trained specialists, they accelerate ROI by reducing workflow disruptions in high-cost care environments. Specialized support ensures clinical issues are triaged and resolved with an understanding of urgency, patient impact, and regulatory requirements — minimizing downtime for revenue-generating clinical systems. The result is higher clinician productivity, stronger adoption of clinical technologies, and reduced burnout — all of which deliver measurable financial and operational returns.

Raising the ROI Bar for IT Investments in Healthcare

KLAS findings show that healthcare organizations are growing more selective about where they spend their next IT dollar. Leaders are rigorously evaluating business cases and demanding better alignment between technology investments and enterprise outcomes. This is where the right technology partner makes a critical difference.

A partner like GuideIT does more than operate and support IT environments. We help healthcare organizations determine which tools are worth investing in and maximize their use of those tools. For over 30 years, we’ve helped healthcare leaders align technology decisions with long-term business goals and financial constraints. Book a free consultation with our healthcare IT specialists to learn more about seeing greater ROI from your technology.