Performance Effects Related to the Sequence of Integration of Healthcare Technologies

Abstract

There is a natural order to most events in life: Everything from learning to read to DNA sequences in molecular biology follows some predetermined, structured methodology that has been refined to yield improved results. Likewise, it would seem that firms could benefit by adopting and implementing technologies in some logical way so as to increase their overall performance. In this study of 555 hospitals, we investigate the order in which medical technologies are transformed into information technologies through a process of converting them from stand‐alone technologies to interoperable, integrated information systems and whether certain configurations of sequences of integration yield additional value. We find that sequence does matter and that hospitals that integrated foundational technologies first—which in this case are known to be more complex—tend to perform better. Theoretical and practical implications of this finding and others are discussed.

Research Commentary—The Digital Transformation of Healthcare: Current Status and the Road Ahead

“…However, the positive findings from aggregate economic analyses become less robust when more granular measures are used (Kazley and Ozcan 2008, Devine et al 2010, Himmelstein et al 2010. Although HIT has been argued to have important effects on cost savings in some instances (Wang et al 2003, Hillestad et al 2005, Angst et al 2011, the evidence is not overwhelming.…”

Event sequence modeling of IT adoption in healthcare

“…This study examines how different paths of adoption can lead to different financial returns for the organization and suggests that there are interactions between the systems. Angst et al [4] recently published a paper closely related to this study. They posit that integration is a key factor in the value creation of systems at the Enterprise level.…”

Healthcare IT Adoption: An Analysis of Knowledge Transfer in Socioeconomic Networks

“…3 The variable similarity, denoted ϕ i , measures on average how similar the CDR-adopting peer hospitals are in their business scope when compared with the focal hospital i:…”

“…Recognizing this, in 2009, President Obama committed $20 billion to computerize all medical records [34]. Despite such support, adoption of information technology in the U.S. healthcare industry lags far behind that in other industries in the country [3], as well as the healthcare industry in many other developed nations [23]. According to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), as of the first quarter of 2013, roughly one in eight providers were still without a clinical data repository (CDR) system-the most basic building block of an electronic health record (EHR) system and an essential step toward fully computerizing patient data.…”