U.S. hospitals are reporting more outsourcing for certain services. But the question remains: will the trend continue?

According to Becker's Hospital Review, most hospital and health systems have resorted to outsourcing to make up for financial loss that has resulted from Medicare reimbursement cuts as well as certain penalties and programs initiated under health care reform.

While hospitals have always outsourced certain services like supply chain, today more hospitals are outsourcing diagnostic imaging, dialysis, anesthesia, hospitalist staffing, emergency department staffing, as well as information technology, according to Becker's.
"We will continue to see outsourcing in these areas in the next two to three years," John Boland, director of health care at the consulting firm Navigant, told Becker's.

However, due to hospital consolidation, this trend might eventually reverse.

"What I think is going to happen is, as hospital systems get bigger, they may begin creating their own operations," Barry Ostrowsky, president and CEO of Barnabas Health in West Orange, N.J., told Becker's. "Outsourcing may start to decline as companies are big enough to perform the services in an equally efficient way."

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