As staffing pressures mount, cloud migration offers a clear path to smarter IT in healthcare

A worsening IT workforce shortage is pushing many U.S. health systems to reconsider the viability of their sprawling on-premises infrastructure. The IDC estimates that 90% of organizations globally will be impacted by IT skills gaps within the next two years, with approximately two-thirds already experiencing revenue shortfalls and operational challenges due to staffing constraints. Healthcare organizations managing complex legacy systems face particular vulnerability, as the skills shortage threatens to generate $5.5 trillion in economic losses through delayed implementations, reduced competitive positioning, and missed business opportunities. 

 Rather than stretch already thin teams across aging systems, many organizations are shifting toward cloud platforms that can adapt to changing demand and allow teams to direct their efforts toward other priorities. Migrating to the cloud can cut total cost of ownership by up to 40%—while laying the foundation for more modern, responsive care delivery. 

Maximizing the value of healthcare cloud migration 

When managed strategically, cloud migrations deliver scalability, agility, and long-term savings. By addressing common pitfalls directly, organizations turn potential risks into opportunities for greater value: 

• Data efficiency: Without a plan, data-egress fees from moving large datasets back on-premises can drive up monthly bills. By architecting “local-read, cloud-write” workflows and negotiating egress credits, organizations keep costs predictable while ensuring data is accessible where it’s needed most.  
• Optimized spend: Idle dev/test accounts and unchecked environment sprawl can quietly drain budgets. Automation flips this challenge into value, enforcing tagging, shutting down unused resources, and leveraging reserved instances to maximize every dollar invested. 
• Stronger teams: Skill gaps can lead to costly consultant fees and overtime. Instead, investing in internal cloud academies and partnering with experts like Rhapsody builds lasting expertise, empowering teams to innovate sustainably. 

Real-world examples of healthcare cloud migration success

Across healthcare, organizations are proving the value of cloud migration, saving money, scaling faster, and empowering their teams. Here are a few examples: 

UofL Health
Facing a maxed-out data center and 135 interfaces (with 200 more pending), UofL Health migrated to Rhapsody, hosted on AWS. In 18 months, its three-person team built a scalable integration backbone, now powering 1,200+ connections and 700 live routes without disrupting patient care. 

Overlake Medical Center
Overlake Medical Center modernized its aging integration platform by moving to cloud-hosted Corepoint. The upgrade eliminated technical debt, reduced VPN maintenance, and equipped analysts with modern tools. This shift accelerated projects and improved system usability.  

Axia Women’s Health
Axia Women’s Health replaced a standalone API engine with Corepoint Integration, saving $3000,000 and streaming API and HL7 workflows. The shift consolidated multiple EHR connections, reduced maintenance burden, and freed technical staff for higher-value analytics and patient care.  

Qventus:
Healthcare IT platform, Qventus,consolidated its integrations with Rhapsody, achieving 10× interface throughput and reducing infrastructure costs by 15% per customer per month. With Rhapsody as its backbone, Qventus redirected focus from infrastructure upkeep to product innovation. 

Healthcare cloud migration strategy: A roadmap to reduce costs, boost scalability, and empower teams

 Cloud migration is more than just a technology shift, it’s a strategic foundation for growth. Leading healthcare organizations are taking these steps to capture its full value: 

1. Quantify your baseline
   Start by creating a clear picture of where you are today. Inventory hardware, licenses, labor, and interface volume to calculate a 3-year total cost of ownership (TCO). This establishes the business case and sets measurable goals.
2. Prioritize high-return workloads
   Don’t try to move everything at once. Focus first on brittle, high-maintenance, or costly interfaces where migration delivers the fastest ROI. Quick wins build momentum and confidence for larger shifts. 
3. Design for distributed placement
   Map workloads strategically across edge, private cloud, and multi-cloud environments. This ensures resiliency, regulatory alignment, and performance that scales with patient and provider demand. 
4. Embed FinOps from day one
   Cost transparency is critical. Real-time dashboards, anomaly alerts, and cost-per-message metrics prevent surprises and enable teams to actively optimize spend as they scale. 
5. Invest in people
   Technology only delivers value when teams are ready to leverage it. Provide engineers with 40–80 hours of dedicated cloud education and augment with managed services partners to accelerate skills development and reduce reliance on external consultants. 
6. Measure value capture:
   Track cost savings, FTE reallocation, and operational improvements. Reinvest at least half of those savings into innovation projects that move the organization forward, from advanced analytics to patient engagement initiatives. 

Modernizing cost structures with a cloud-based IT model

Traditional on-prem refresh cycles force hospitals to make large capital investments every few years – new servers, new licenses, more square footage, more cooling. Cloud consumption models flip that script. Health systems instead pay only for what they use, transforming CapEx into more manageable OpEx. 

The benefits aren’t just financial. Migrating to the cloud can lower infrastructure costs by 20–25% —resources that can be redirected toward innovation rather than maintenance. 

Still, migration without oversight can be a financial trap. Nearly two-thirds of engineers say they lack visibility into cloud costs, according to CloudZero, and about a third of cloud spend is typically wasted. 

Choosing the right cloud strategy

One size doesn’t fit all. Healthcare organizations often need the flexibility to retain control over their environments while taking advantage of cloud-native automation and scalability. Rhapsody solutions are built to support this hybrid approach. Through zero trust network access (ZTNA), the Rhapsody team can securely manage cloud-hosted services within the customer’s environment, striking a balance between autonomy and support. 

By deploying integration solutions like Rhapsody, Corepoint, or Envoy iPaaS in the cloud, healthcare organizations can retain control over their data while offloading infrastructure management to trusted experts. In an environment where teams are stretched thin, distributed-cloud models have become essential for sustaining efficiency and controlling costs. Aligning IT strategy with business value and equipping staff with the right tools and support allows healthcare leaders to shift from firefighting to positioning their organizations to thrive well into the future.