Senior dwelling nonprofits have adjusted their expertise spending priorities within the final 12 months, with fewer {dollars} allotted to neighborhood infrastructure in 2024, for instance.
That’s in accordance with the newest Ziegler CFO Hotline report on expertise spending, which is launched each two years with enter from LeadingAge’s Middle for Growing older Providers Applied sciences (CAST).
Among the many survey’s takeaways is that senior dwelling organizations are making fewer investments in communication infrastructure, reminiscent of excessive pace web connectivity. In 2024, 58% of the greater than 100 respondents stated infrastructure for expertise was amongst their prime 5 investments, down from 74% in 2022.
A part of the explanation infrastructure has seen declining investments seems to be a scarcity of returns on the funding.
“I’m starting to wrestle with continued IT funding with no return on funding,” one respondent commented within the survey. “With the expectation of upper staffing necessities, it turns into exhausting to search out an offset to the numerous price of IT packages and providers which are most frequently coming with a month-to-month price.”
Different prime areas of funding in 2024 included digital medical and well being report techniques, which 51% of the respondents recognized as a top-five space of funding; workforce and staffing scheduling techniques (48%), digital level of care and level of service documentation techniques (47%) and entry management techniques (44%).
Multiple-third of respondents, 40%, stated they plan to spend money on information analytics instruments, reminiscent of dashboards, in 2024. Entry management instruments and digital medical report techniques had been the following two highest for deliberate funding, at 30% and 29% respectively.
Solely 13% of these responding to the survey stated they used AI robotic expertise, principally for eating providers and bussing tables.
One respondent wrote that they had been involved with the return on funding (ROI) of robotics.
“We have now checked out robotic AI assistants for issues like carrying trays to resident tables and aiding with meals supply, nevertheless it looks like employees are likely to stroll together with the robots and use them extra like a cart than an autonomous robotic,” the commenter wrote. “So, the tech wouldn’t actually save on FTE or present any ROI.”
As a complete, the common share of budgets have been growing for expertise spending over the previous two years as effectively. The common capital funds devoted to expertise for 2024 has been 8.8%, up from 2022’s 8.3%. Working budgets additionally noticed a small improve, averaging 3.5% in 2024, up from 3.4% in 2022.
Nonetheless, respondents have famous an growing reliance on expertise will demand greater than 3% of an working funds within the coming years.
“We have now an extended approach to go, however we’re shifting in the best route. Expertise must be greater than the usual follow of allocating 3% of budgets, each capital and operational,” the respondent stated. “As our reliance on expertise grows, we should make investments extra to maintain our information secure and successfully utilized.”
