Critical factors of hospital adoption on CRM system: Organizational and information system perspectives

a r t i c l e i n f o The recent rapid increase in the amount of medical information has pushed hospitals to confront an essential issue which is how to utilize healthcare information technology to improve healthcare services quality. Customer relationship management system (CRMS) is an innovative technology which facilitates the process to acquire, develop, and maintain customer relationships more efficiently and effectively. From the business perspective, patients represent the major customers of the hospital who receive and feel the healthcare services directly and realistically. Although the critical factors for the adoption of information systems have been identified in previous studies, few have specifically explored CRMS adoption in hospitals despite the fact that it has dramatic impacts on the quality of healthcare services and customer satisfaction. To fill this gap, this study proposes an integrated model that incorporates both organizational and system related factors as primary determiners of CRMS adoption in hospitals. A series of surveys were conducted with three levels of health institutions in Taiwan: medical centers, regional hospitals, and community hospitals. The results indicated that hospital size, IS capabilities of staff, innovation of senior executives, knowledge management capabilities, and relative advantage have significant influence on the CRMS adoption. The research results also reveal constructive suggestions to researchers, hospitals, CRMS vendors, and the government to increase the likelihood of adopting CRMS. Improving quality of care and customer satisfaction are the key business drivers, and these will have the most impact on healthcare in the next 2 years as indicated by a research report from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) [24]. In a recent investigation, the chief information officers (CIO) in hospitals ranked consumer considerations as the second most important business issue that has an impact on the healthcare sector [25].The American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) [3], a renowned international professional society, identified the top issues confronting hospitals based on a survey among 1080 hospitals in 2007. CRM related issues (care for the uninsured, physician/hospital relations, and customer satisfaction) which most concern the chief executive officers (CEO) have been in the top-nine list for three consecutive years. In addition to the results in the United States, CRM has also become more important in the United Kingdom and Germany since a series of interview investigations have discovered that a large proportion of customers feel dissatisfied with current healthcare services [30,44,45]. This dissatisfaction needs to …