Hospital budget increase for information technology during phase 1 meaningful use.

Federal policies have a significant effect on how businesses spend money. The 2009 HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act) authorized incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid to clinicians and hospitals when they use certified electronic health records privately and securely to achieve specified improvements in care delivery. Federal incentive payments were offered in 2011 for hospitals that had satisfied "meaningful use" criteria. A longitudinal study of nonfederal hospital information technology (IT) budgets (N = 493) during the years 2009 to 2011 found increases in the percentage of hospital annual operating budgets allocated to IT in the years leading up to these federal incentives. This increase was most pronounced among hospitals receiving high proportions of their reimbursements from Medicaid, followed by hospitals receiving high proportions of their reimbursements from Medicare, possibly indicating a budget shift during this period to more IT spending to achieve meaningful-use policy guidelines.

Planning for Hospital IT Implementation: A New Look at the Business Case.

Compared to organizations in other industries, hospitals are slow to adopt information technology (IT). Those planning for system implementation must understand the barriers to IT adoption which, in healthcare, include the relatively high acquisition and maintenance costs of sophisticated administrative and clinical information systems. Understanding the overall business case is particularly important for hospital IT planners. This paper describes the literature that examines benefits from using health IT. In addition, we focus on a series of studies conducted in Florida that provide generalizable evidence regarding the overall business case associated with hospital adoption for information systems. These studies focus broadly on the improved financial, operational, and clinical performance associated with IT.

Factors influencing health information system adoption in American hospitals.

OBJECTIVES: To study the number of health information systems (HISs), applicable to administrative, clinical, and executive decision support functionalities, adopted by acute care hospitals and to examine how hospital market, organizational, and financial factors influence HIS adoption. METHODS: A cross-sectional analysis was performed with 1441 hospitals selected from metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. Multiple data sources were merged. Six hypotheses were empirically tested by multiple regression analysis. RESULTS: HIS adoption was influenced by the hospital market, organizational, and financial factors. Larger, system-affiliated, and for-profit hospitals with more preferred provider organization contracts are more likely to adopt managerial information systems than their counterparts. Operating revenue is positively associated with HIS adoption. CONCLUSION: The study concludes that hospital organizational and financial factors influence on hospitals' strategic adoption of clinical, administrative, and managerial information systems.

Opening the black box: measuring hospital information technology capability.

Recently, health care investment in information technology (IT) has experienced a significant increase. Paralleling this increase has been an increase in IT capabilities. Despite the interest in and promises of IT in the health care setting, there is a paucity of empirical research that has attempted to define an organizational measure of IT capability. The dearth of research has contributed to the traditional belief that IT is perceived as a "black box," whereby organizational resources enter the box as "inputs" and are somehow transformed into positive outcomes for an organization. However, for positive outcomes to be realized, these outcomes must be measurable. This research uses a stakeholder perspective to develop a theoretically specified measure of IT capability. A latent construct, IT munificence, is proposed using tenets from diffusion of innovation theory and strategic contingency theory. The construct is tested using a sample of 1,545 acute care hospitals located in the United States. IT munificence fits the study data well, supporting the hypothesis that IT munificence represents a strategy of hospital IT capability.

Factors affecting the adoption of telemedicine--a multiple adopter perspective.

This paper utilizes the diffusion of innovation framework to discuss factors affecting adoption of telemedicine. Empirical and anecdotal findings are organized across five attributes affecting innovation adoption rates for the following four adopter groups: physicians, patients, hospital administrators, and payers. A discussion of the implications is included.