Readers Write: Healthcare’s Biggest Hidden Asset

Healthcare’s Biggest Hidden Asset
By Aasim Saeed, MD, MPA

Aasim Saeed, MD, MPA is founder and CEO of Amenities Health.

Health systems across the US continue to grapple with a host of financial challenges, from staffing shortages to lower reimbursement rates to increasing competition from new players in the market. However, most organizations have an unused resource at their disposal that is worth significant value and that is not leveraged to its full potential: MACC credits.

Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) credits are pre-purchased credits that health organizations commit to spending on Microsoft’s Azure cloud services over a specific time. If you remember the old cell phone plans before rollover minutes were introduced, you understand how these “use or lose” benefits work. It’s like buying a golf club membership that requires a minimum purchase of food or drink at the clubhouse.

MACC agreements allow customers to commit to a minimum level of Azure consumption in exchange for discounted pricing and additional benefits. But they are lost if you don’t consume the benefits within a year. You can’t carry them over.

In my opinion, these agreements are probably one of the most underutilized IT resources in healthcare. Many IT and innovation teams have forgotten about them, or don’t even know that they exist. As a result, few are using all the capacity that they paid for. We’re now six months into 2024, and chances are most MACC credits are still sitting, gathering dust. Given the financial strains facing the healthcare industry, technology teams need to use these funds before they expire at the end of the year.

Accessing a third-party app is one of the easiest, but often overlooked, ways to accomplish this. Many valuable third-party applications are available via the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. If healthcare organizations have MACC allocations that are at risk of going to waste, they can adopt these applications at no net new cost. For instance, a hospital might fold a new chatbot application, advanced online scheduling, or billing software into its MACC agreement.

The marketplace is also designed to streamline the contracting process. It allows healthcare systems and other organizations to transact automatically without having to complete a bunch of paperwork on the back end. Rather than getting bogged down in the contracting process, healthcare systems can purchase the applications directly through Azure, install them immediately, and use them to improve their operations.

Another option is to use the credits to build cloud environments. All MACC agreements come with cloud support built into the offering, which presents an opportunity for health systems to migrate some of their on-premises resources to the cloud, helping them eliminate some of the capital costs that are associated with data center refreshes. Also, the cloud presents an opportunity for hospitals to pilot new tools, paying only on a per-user basis rather than making the serious capital investments that are frequently associated with on-premises solutions.

Healthcare organizations should carefully prioritize their technology needs when using resources under their MACC agreements. This involves weighing the potential impact of new applications against factors like ease of implementation, necessary training, and ongoing management. It’s crucial to begin with a comprehensive evaluation of the organization’s overarching digital transformation goals and how cloud services can effectively align with these objectives.

By increasing awareness of their Azure commitments and actively taking advantage of these hidden assets, healthcare systems can enhance and streamline their technology environments without any additional costs to their technology budgets.