Aged care IT investment put on hold
Aged care providers are reconsidering IT investment following Microsoft’s decision to change its software licensing arrangement for charitable aged care organisations.
Under the new arrangements, aged care providers will only be able to purchase the charitable licences if they meet a set of criteria and run a facility with a maximum of 60 beds.
In a survey of providers by KM Group, which was reported in Australian Ageing Agenda online, 45.5% of participants said they would delay existing and planned IT spending.
A further 13.4% of participants in the survey said they would stall IT investment until viable alternatives were found. KM Group estimates that the changes could lead to a price hike of up to 500% for not-for-profit providers.
Nine out of 10 provider organisations that took part in the survey said they would consider alternative applications to Microsoft Office, such as open source software and cloud computing.
The survey also revealed alarmingly low levels of investment in information technology. Close to two thirds of participants said they spent less than 2% of their operating expenditure on IT, excluding telecommunications costs.
“And that figure comes off the back of an increase in expenditure last year,” said Mr Barnett.
“On the bright side there is lots of room for improvement”.
