It's not every day that the long-term care industry is mentioned in the same sentence as companies like Apple and Google. Believe it or not, long-term care has a lot in common with these tech behemoths.  

I'm not talking about the latest technology gadgets or the battle for smart phones. The common element here is something much larger and with greater impact. I'm talking about “the cloud."

Apple has been creating a lot of buzz lately about cloud computing with its new iCloud offering. And Google has been there for quite some time with Gmail, Google docs, and other services offered “in the cloud.” While consumers are giving the cloud a go, the long-term care industry has been there for quite some time. That's right. Many long-term care providers were on the leading edge of cloud computing, adopting cloud-based software solutions three, four, or even five years ago. I'll go out on a limb and say the industry has fully embraced the cloud. Let me explain how and why.

Easy Access

A cloud-based application can be accessed from a web browser at any time. Organizations don't install the application on premise because all of the application's heavy lifting – from managing business processes to storing data and managing resources – are handled at an off-site location. It's all managed remotely, accessed over the web. The cloud is in reality the Internet.

In long-term care, many software companies offer their solutions as cloud-based software. Clinical applications, accounting solutions, payroll applications, and scheduling software, just to name a few, are offered as cloud apps and are being adopted quickly by providers. Some products may carry labels like “software as a service” or “SaaS,” or “on demand.” These are all cloud solutions, just with different labels, and they offer very powerful benefits. 

Lower Costs

Cloud-based software offers lower initial costs and TCO because organizations do not have to spend time and effort installing the application on site. All of the infrastructure – the software, hardware and servers required to host, maintain and manage the application to keep it running -- is handled remotely. Removing the investment in the application's installation and infrastructure, from initial implementation through ongoing maintenance, can save an organization a lot of money. Research shows that many common IT labor costs can be reduced 50%, and you can cut hardware costs upwards of 60% for a medium-sized deployment. In addition, cloud applications are usually priced “by the drink” as a monthly subscription fee, as opposed to a costly up-front license fee. All of this frees up capital, and resources, to be spent on other areas of your business.

Get Up and Running Quickly

In addition to lowering costs, the ability to run software in the cloud eliminates major headaches and complexities for providers. For example, implementing a traditional application on-site, and rolling it out to multiple locations, can take many months or more, let alone the effort and resources required to make it happen. Ask your IT person what this is worth. The use of cloud solutions has led to less headaches, less short fuses, and faster implementations than ever before.

Enjoy New Features

One of the greatest benefits of cloud applications is speed. Not just speed with implementation, but speed with which you can access new features and new business functionality. Because cloud solutions are always on, always available over the web, new features can literally appear before your eyes. Upgrades are seamless. This means that a simple stroke of your F5 key can bring new functionality that didn't exist minutes before. Of course, all of this depends on the strategy of each software vendor in delivering new releases, but the benefits here are significant. There is no longer a need to wait for a release that must be physically installed on a machine in your organization, queuing up on IT's priority list waiting for the right resources. The upgrade to new features is handled in the cloud. It's a beautiful thing.

There are many additional technical benefits to cloud applications, like how reliable the application is, how well it can scale to a larger number of users or locations, or how the cloud can pool and share resources more efficiently. But the cloud is most often touted for its ease of implementation, seamless upgrades, low barrier to entry, and faster and greater ROI.

Long-term care providers have been embracing SaaS and other cloud-based solutions for these very reasons. If you haven't already, be sure to evaluate how cloud-based software can be used in your organization. When evaluating on premise solutions versus cloud, make sure to factor all the costs of on premise to get a fair comparison, including your IT resources, hardware, operating systems, servers, etc. Some applications are more suited to a cloud delivery model than others, so develop your checklist and review accordingly. But one thing's for sure: long-term care providers “get it.” Their adoption of cloud applications is showing no signs of slowing down, so expect a ‘cloudy' forecast in long-term care for years to come.

Mark Woodka is CEO of OnShift, a leading provider of Web-based staff scheduling software for the long-term care and senior living industry.