7 Questions for the Perfect MSP Match

As a healthcare provider, you spend years and years honing your craft and sharpening your skills to ensure that your patients are safe and cared for at all times in your practice. So it makes perfect sense that you’d want your practice’s IT network to be in good hands, too.

You may be tempted to follow Captain America’s advice when he says, “The safest hands are our own.” However, when it comes to your practice’s IT, taking matters into your own hands and doing everything yourself is not the best idea.

We know that if we need health advice and treatment, we seek help from doctors. In the same way, you need to rely on the wisdom and experience of IT experts to take care of your organization’s IT network and devices.

Partnering Up With IT Experts

Working hand in hand with IT experts in taking care of your practice’s technology can come in different forms:

• In-house IT Staff. This means hiring at least one person to take care of your practice’s IT for you or building your own IT team, which is great. Unfortunately, this option may be an expensive one—in Sacramento, hiring an IT manager can cost you around $11,000 every month. And unless you can afford to hire at least 3 IT experts, you can’t expect 24/7 monitoring and support.

• On-demand IT Consultants. This means calling an IT expert or company to provide you guidance and assistance whenever you need it. They typically charge you by the hour and mainly offer break-fix solutions. Unfortunately, this means that they take a reactive approach to take care of your practice’s network. In addition, their service coverage is usually limited to business hours, so 24/7 IT support may be off the table.

• Managed Service Provider (MSP). This means outsourcing your IT operations to a team of experts for a fixed monthly rate. They typically take a proactive and holistic approach to manage your IT. Because they comprise an entire team of IT engineers, they can cater to your needs round the clock through both remote and on-site support. An MSP takes care of your organization’s IT issues so that you won’t have to. 

For reasons of availability, cost-efficiency, and convenience, many businesses throughout the US—healthcare practices included—are turning to MSPs to handle a portion or all parts of their IT infrastructure.

Asking Your Way to The Right MSP

If you’re considering a partnership with a trusted MSP, but you’re not quite sure where to start or how to pick the right one, don’t worry. You can ask your way to a great partnership.

When considering a particular MSP for the job, here are seven questions you can ask to know if they’re equipped to meet your IT infrastructure needs:

Do they understand your organization?

You run a healthcare practice, and it doesn’t operate the same way a typical business does. Your needs are unique and may require a totally different IT monitoring approach than what’s commonly used.

Your IT partner should be aware of your unique needs to cater to them effectively. They need to be willing to know more about how your operations run, what tools and technologies you use, the roles these play in your practice operations, and if there are better solutions available.

Are they asking questions about your practice? Or are they simply nodding to whatever you say? 

Do they offer custom services?

In healthcare IT, a one-size-fits-all solution must be avoided at all costs. Your practice’s IT needs are constantly evolving, and your MSP needs to understand that working on your practice’s IT is not a one-and-done deal.

When the pandemic broke out in 2020, workplace and travel restrictions pushed countless practices to shift to new technologies, procedures, and work environments. Some have switched from physical servers to cloud servers, some have embraced remote operations, and some have adopted a hybrid work arrangement. You’re probably one of them.

It’s essential to keep in mind that you need an IT partner that can accommodate these changes and can help you transition to a better, more efficient work setup when the need arises.

What approach do they plan to take?

A more specific question would be: Are they taking a proactive approach to IT management?—because that’s what your practice needs from an MSP.

A proactive approach means working to understand your system even before problems occur. It allows the MSP to identify how it could fail in the future, put in place specific measures based on the data gathered, and effectively prevent or at least mitigate failures that have been anticipated. 

In simple terms, being proactive means not just about showing up at your doorstep whenever there’s a problem—it’s about making sure the problem isn’t there in the first place. 

Unless an MSP takes a proactive approach to IT management, their service is just a notch above break-fix solutions, which isn’t what you need. As a result, you could end up not taking full advantage of an effective IT partnership.