The role of vendors in health information systems implementation: Assessing the perception of healthcare executives and vendors

With the increasing reliance on hospital information systems (HIS) vendors to facilitate deploying new information technologies for better patient care outcome, the presence of HIS vendors has become a reality in the daily operations of any healthcare organization.;This research project addresses the role of vendors in the implementation of hospital information systems as perceived by healthcare information technology executives and vendors. The study investigates the perceived impact of certain selected factors within the technical, organizational and personnel context on user satisfaction and system implementation successfulness.;The research is designed as an analytical study to gather qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate the importance of the selected factors and explore under-estimated areas of the vendor's role for future research. This dissertation uses two surveys: an IT executive survey and a vendor's survey for data collection and analysis from a randomly selected sample of 360 healthcare IT executives and 328 HIS vendors via the US postal mail as well as web-based methods.;The results showed that healthcare IT executives and vendors place a heavier emphasis on the technical functionality of the system, and the vendor's performance than on other system selection factors when selecting HIS system. Technical functionality attributes include system quality and ease of use, while vendor's performance includes experience, financial stability and support. Apparently these considerations are recognized by HIS vendors and consultants since financial stability and support is what distinguishes good companies from bad.;Moreover, since hospital operations depend on an interrelationship among different departments and personnel, it seems that IT executives are more likely to consider the importance of post-implementation services such as: maintenance, on-line support, and on site support more than other services when implementing the HIS system.;Finally, healthcare IT executives and HIS vendors are on the same page in terms of identifying vendor factors that have the greatest influence on the success of HIS implementation. IT executives consider the quality of the implementation team, the vendor's experience and the vendor's support as the most influencing vendor factors in the successful implementation of HIS, just as vendor participants do.