The Importance of Service Value in Accelerating the Adoption of Radio Frequency Identification Technology in the Emergency Room of Hospitals

Hospitals are slow adopters of radio frequency identification technology (RFID), in comparison with retailers and military units. Customer satisfaction and organizational performance are important drivers for RFID adoption. It is central to understand how RFID can help improve customer service quality in hospitals, thereby improving customer satisfaction and organizational performance. The emergency room (ER) plays a vital role in a hospital because it receives patients in critical situations. Any mistakes made during the process of providing emergency medical services to a patient can seriously ruin the reputation of a hospital, and lower the morality and self-efficacy of caregivers. Many systematic problems manifest in the ER: overstretched staffs, insufficient resources, operational inefficiency via manual tracking of medical equipment, patient’s location and care progression of patients, slow response time and disturbing working environment. RFID can enhance the visibility of emergency medical supply chain, from admitting, sorting to treating patients with emergent medical services. This technology is an effective alternative to remedy these systematic problems, and improve service quality to internal (caregivers, MIS department and staff) and external customers (patients and their family members). This study deliberately incorporates the construct of service value, comprised of the factors of customer satisfaction, service quality and sacrifice, into the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). This integrative model can assist us in understanding the importance of service value in the RFID adoption process in the ER. Eighty five subjects, including caregivers, MIS department and staffs, participated in this study. Statistical analysis shows that customer satisfaction and service quality are two important elements of the service value when introducing RFID into the ER. The element of sacrifice is less salient in its influence on perceived service quality, which can affect the RFID decision of users. Our findings affirm that service value is as important as these four technology adoption constructs identified in the UTAUT model: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions.