Long Island's healthcare scene is huge. Many providers have multiple hospitals and ambulatory facilities with thousands of employees on payroll. Some of them consistently make it to the best hospital list. You would think with that kind of scale, the tech side would be bulletproof. It's not.
Healthcare organizations are getting slammed with ransomware. About 34% were hit last year, at an average cost of $1.27 million each time. Meanwhile, 63% of doctors and nurses say they received inadequate training on the digital tools they use every day.
Legacy Systems That No One Can Change
Visit any of the leading Long Island hospitals, and you will see computers running software from 2015. Maybe earlier. These systems were developed before smartphones even existed, yet they are still managing vital information, including billing and patient records.
The worst part? Poor communication. Patient records live in one system. Billing's in another. Lab results are somewhere else entirely. A doctor trying to see a complete patient history ends up opening four different programs. Sometimes they are literally calling other departments to track down information.
Everyone knows these old systems need to go. But upgrading is expensive and scary. What if something breaks during the transition? What if staff can't figure out the new system? Therefore, hospitals keep struggling with technologies that ought to have been abandoned during the Obama era. Instead of funding something that genuinely works, they are paying for the upkeep of these dinosaurs.
Cybersecurity Is a Complete Disaster
Medical records sell for huge sums of money on the dark web. Detailed health records can earn criminals hundreds of dollars.
Consider the security breach involving Change Healthcare earlier this year. About 100 million people's data was exposed. Using pilfered login information for a vendor site without multi-factor authentication enabled, they accessed the data. One basic security step could have stopped the biggest healthcare data breach ever.
Long Island facilities face the same threats. Hackers aren't just going after the national chains. They're hitting regional hospitals, small medical practices, health tech startups, and anyone who looks vulnerable. And many smaller operations don't have real security staff. They've got one IT person who also handles the printers, email, and everything else. That person's supposed to stop sophisticated cyber attacks in their spare time? Good luck with that.
HIPAA compliance makes everything harder, too. One mistake and you're facing hefty fines. Every device and software handling patient data needs protection.
Staff Lack Knowledge on How to Use Technology
Buying fancy new technology is easy. Getting people to actually use it right? That's where it all falls apart.
About 44% of medical professionals use mobile health apps regularly. A third use electronic health records. Sounds decent until you find out that over 60% of those same people say they got bad training.
Hospitals spend millions on a new EHR system. They do some training sessions during rollout. Fast forward six months, and staff are using maybe 30% of what the system can do. Or they've invented workarounds that defeat the whole purpose of upgrading in the first place.
Most places don't do ongoing tech training. You receive your login on day one, and you're expected to work it out.
Systems That Fail to Communicate
The patient sees their doctor in Nassau County. Gets referred to a specialist in Suffolk. Ends up at a Northwell hospital for surgery. Three different providers, three different computer systems that don't share information.
The primary care records don't automatically go to the specialist. The hospital has to manually request files from both offices. Sometimes important data gets missed. Sometimes it just takes forever. This happens every single day across Long Island.
Federal rules say healthcare organizations need to keep data secure, but also make it shareable. The idea is good, but the execution fails badly. Different EHR vendors use different formats. Even when systems technically can talk to each other, making it happen smoothly takes serious IT work that most places haven't done.
This isn't just annoying paperwork. When doctors don't have complete medical histories, they order duplicate tests. They miss drug interactions. Patients get frustrated repeating the same information at every appointment. The administrative work of tracking down records burns time and money that should be spent on actual patient care.
Northwell's done pretty well here because its facilities are integrated. But the second a patient needs care outside that network, we're back to square one.
Too Much Data, No Idea What to Do With It
Healthcare generates ridiculous amounts of data now. Wearables track vitals 24/7. Imaging equipment creates massive files. Labs are running thousands of tests. Patient portals are logging everything. Where does it all go?
Most organisations are unprepared for the torrent of data coming in from various sources, and half of it is junk.
Storage costs money. But just storing data doesn't help if you can't make sense of it. Some Long Island hospitals bought AI tools to analyze their data. Turns out AI needs clean, organized information to work with. If your data's a mess, AI just gives you messy results.
Then there's the question of what to keep. Healthcare regulations say you've got to retain certain records for years. But you can't keep everything forever. The storage costs alone would bankrupt you. Someone has to make calls about retention policies, backups, and disaster recovery. That's boring IT work that nobody thinks about until the server crashes and half your data's gone.
Unable to Find Qualified IT Professionals
Everyone talks about nursing shortages. IT company long island are struggling just as badly. Good health IT people are hard to find and expensive to keep. Long Island is competing with NYC hospitals, big health systems nationwide, and tech companies for the same talent.
Small practices and start-ups get crushed. They can't pay what Northwell pays. They definitely can't match what Google or Amazon offers. So they end up with junior staff or outsourced IT that takes forever to respond. When something breaks, there's nobody around who really knows that system.
Even the bigger organizations feel it. They might have IT teams that look fine on paper, but those people are getting pulled in ten directions. Someone's trying to fix network security while fielding calls about broken printers. Everything's urgent, so nothing gets done right.
Burnout's a real issue too. Health IT is stressful work. Systems go down, and patient care gets affected. That responsibility weighs on people. When good IT staff burn out and quit, everyone else has to pick up the slack.
Cloud Migration Sounds Great Until It Doesn't
Cloud's supposed to solve everything: better access, easier scaling, lower costs. Many healthcare organizations are moving in that direction. But it’s not that easy.
You can't just throw patient records into the cloud. There are regulations about where data gets stored and who can see it. There are integration headaches connecting cloud systems with equipment that's still on-site. And healthcare can't afford downtime during migrations.
Some Long Island providers have had great experiences going to the cloud. Others are surprised by massive bills when their data transfers cost more than projected. Or they find out their internet connection's too unreliable to run entirely on cloud-based systems.
The decision comes down to how much risk you can handle and whether you've got people who know what they're doing. Jump in too fast without planning, and you are in trouble. Wait too long and you fall behind. There's no perfect answer.
Compliance Rules Never End
HIPAA. HITECH. State privacy laws. Medical device regulations. The list never stops, and the rules keep changing.
Staying within the rules calls for ongoing work, routine audits, security checks, and policy changes. Everything needs documentation. Patient privacy matters, but it consumes resources. Small health tech companies sometimes struggle just to meet basic requirements, let alone stay ahead of new standards.
Organizations with flexible IT systems can adjust pretty quickly to new regulations. The ones still running patchwork legacy stuff go into panic mode, trying to retrofit compliance into systems that were never built for it.
The Next Moves
These issues will not vanish any time soon. Long Island's healthcare sector will keep growing. We have an aging population that guarantees it. However, growth cannot be sustained on a faulty IT infrastructure.
Health tech on Long Island's got massive potential. They have incredible medical talent, strong research institutions, and millions of patients. What's missing is often the IT backbone that lets innovation actually scale. Get that piece right and everything else becomes possible.
Let's Fix Your IT Problems
B&L PC Solutions understands what Long Island healthcare is dealing with. We work with medical practices, hospitals, and health tech companies to build IT systems that support growth instead of blocking it. Legacy system headaches? Cybersecurity gaps? Compliance worries? We've seen it all, and we know how to fix it. Call us today and let's talk about getting your IT infrastructure into shape so your organization can actually grow.
Tags: HealthTech, LongIslandHealthcare
