While healthcare.gov’s problems can’t be blamed on any one player, it certainly raises critical questions for providers thinking about hiring a third party IT firm, questions like: What are the pros and cons of hiring an outsider? What hiring criteria should we use?

Knowing the pros and cons and what to look for will save headaches and money.

A recent Washington Post report suggests that CGI Federal, the IT contractor involved in setting up the website, probably should have been better vetted. The newspaper reported that CGI’s “performance on Ontario, Canada’s health-care medical registry for diabetes sufferers was so poor that officials ditched the $46.2 million contract after three years of missed deadlines.”

Whether the IT advisory firm you bring in works to your advantage or disadvantage depends in part on how good your vetting process is. That process requires running through a list of relevant questions – some obvious, some not so obvious.  

Among the many issues to ask about:

* Are your engineers and consultants certified in the specialties needed?  Among the credentials to look for are MCSA (Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate), PMP (Project Management Professional), VCP (VMware Certified Professional), as well as certification on Cisco networks, and storage networking, said David Boone, CEO at IT outsourcing services company Paranet Solutions in Dallas.

* Does the firm have a proven track record in healthcare?

* Will it offer guaranteed response times?

* Does your team have experience writing policy and procedure manuals? (All the IT systems are useless if staffers don’t have an easy-to-understand set of instructions on how to use them.)

There are advantages to hiring an IT firm that offers the right answers to these and related questions. One of them is better compliance. An IT firm that knows the complex regulations outlined in the HITECH and HIPAA laws will help you meet those regs, reducing the risk of costly penalties for data breaches, for example. If the consultants have experience implementing SaaS and other cloud systems, that may also lower operational costs, said Boone.

If the advisory firm is up-to-date on new developments that your internal team has yet to catch up on, that’s one more advantage of bringing an outside IT firm on board. 

“The No. 1 reason for any organization … to reach out to an IT advisory firm is for knowledge transfer,” said Nancy Landman, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s CIO for International and Commercial Services. “As organizations continue to innovate through technology, many new skill sets must be developed internally. IT advisory firms are a great way to acquire immediate experience in a new area while training internal resources on the new technology or solution.”

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