Expanse MaaS and (Traditional) Expanse - A Comparison of the Advantages and Considerations for Each Solution

Haffty Consulting is happy to provide our audience with a fourth post from our “guest”  blogger John Haffty. John agreed to share his comparison of the advantages and considerations of Expanse MaaS and (Traditional) Expanse for hospitals evaluating migrating to Expanse. Here are John Haffty’s thoughts….

Author’s Note:  For purposes of clarity, this article will refer to the two current MEDITECH Expanse solutions as (Traditional) Expanse, which will refer to the traditional licensed platform, and Expanse MaaS, which is MEDITECH’s subscription-based offering.

Let’s start with the fact that most of you reading this will already be familiar with many of these points but if in reading this, you pick up one new thought, this might be worth your time.

If you are with another vendor or on an older version of MEDITECH (yes, there are still many hospitals on MAGIC or C/S), there is much to be gained from implementing MEDITECH Expanse as the functionality available should directly improve productivity, increase user satisfaction, and if implemented correctly, realize measurable financial and clinical benefits. If you are having trouble estimating the financial and non-financial benefits of moving to Expanse, either Expanse MaaS or (Traditional) Expanse, Haffty Consulting has a detailed Benefits Realization tool to support hospitals in estimating the benefits moving to Expanse would help their organization achieve. Please contact David Haffty at dhaffty@hafftyconsulting.com if you are interested in partnering with Haffty Consulting on a complimentary customized estimate of the benefits of moving to Expanse for your organization.

Advantages of Expanse MaaS

• Low upfront cost

• Predictable monthly subscription cost

  • As MaaS includes many necessary third-party products (Zynx, IMO, etc.) you can plan to eliminate these contracts and costs, further improving the financial aspect of MaaS.

• Cloud-Based which relieves your hospital of infrastructure refresh concerns and as importantly, provides added cybersecurity protection.

  • One of the challenges of smaller hospitals is recruiting and retaining the technical talent to manage the infrastructure.

• MEDITECH does more, but not all, of the implementation.

• MEDITECH delivers software updates requiring less effort on the part of the hospital.

• Expanded standard content to reduce build and ensure optimal set to take advantage of advance features and integration.

Expanse MaaS Considerations

•  MEDITECH does more, but not all, of the implementation.

  • Some clients have not fully realized that they need to commit resources to the implementation.

  • Many of the potential improvements from the software involve modifying internal processes and workflows. The hospital should lead the responsibility and focus on these.  Failure to focus effort on these will minimize the benefits to be realized. 

  • Clarify what conversions are provided and who is responsible for extracting legacy data and validating each conversion.

• Expanse MaaS includes most, but not all, of the MEDITECH software suite.

  • Make sure you realize what applications are not standard.

• Recognize that your hospital is sharing a pod with other hospitals in the Google Cloud and the timing of updates and related downtime is outside of your control. 

• Recognize that use of tablets by physicians and nurses, which are key drivers of productivity and user satisfaction advantages in MaaS, are based on wireless infrastructure and this is the responsibility of the hospital. (This is true for Expanse MaaS as well as (Traditional) Expanse)

• There will still be a need for the hospital to provide some IT support as MEDITECH is not your IT department. 

  • Many of the functions your IT department was performing may still need to be done.  

  • Assess third party solutions, what will be sunset and what will need interfacing and support.

  • Make sure you are clear on what routine support MEDITECH does and does not provide.

(Traditional) Expanse Advantages

• Fully configured for your hospital.

  • Consider the lifetime costs to operate both Maas and Traditional Expanse. Most organizations retain their EHR for 10+ years, reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of (Traditional) Expanse over time.

  • Detailed TCO modeling is a worthwhile exercise.  I know of at least one firm in the IT Advisory space with a proven model I have found to be very accurate.  Please reach out to me if you would like a recommendation and introduction.

• Full control over timing of updates and downtime.

(Traditional) Expanse Considerations

• (Traditional) Expanse requires a significantly larger up-front capital investment for the software and potentially the hardware infrastructure (although you can avoid this by using a MEDITECH approved cloud hosting vendor). If you would like my recommendation on hosting vendors to consider, please email me and I would be glad to share my thoughts with you.

  • If you choose to self-host, you will need to recruit and retain technical talent to maintain your infrastructure, which has been a challenge for some hospitals.

• To fully configure the software to your hospital’s needs and preferences will require a larger implementation effort than MaaS.

  • Most hospitals need to bring in experienced outside MEDITECH consultants to support the one-time effort to implement (Traditional) Expanse. The level of resources for this will be greater than a MaaS implementation and therefore these costs will need to be anticipated.

Of course, both approaches also require routine post-live optimization and best practice implementation to continuously improve outcomes and take advantage of all MEDITECH Expanse has to offer.

I hope these ideas are of some value and you are welcome to forward to me any other suggestions at johnhaffty@gmail.com.