Performance Evaluation of an Information Technology Intervention Regarding Charging for Inpatient Medical Materials at a Regional Teaching Hospital in Taiwan: Empirical Study

Abstract

Background The process of manually recording the consumption of medical materials can be time consuming and prone to omission owing to its detailed and complicated nature. Implementing an information system will better improve work performance. Objective The Information System Success Model was adopted as the theoretical foundation. The opinions of nursing staff were collected to verify the impact of the system intervention on their work performance. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted at a regional teaching hospital. Nursing staff were invited to participate in the field survey. A total of 296 questionnaires were collected, and of these, 284 (95.9%) were valid and returned. Results The key findings showed that two critical factors (“subjective norm” and “system quality”) had significant positive effects (both P<.001) on user satisfaction (R2=0.709). The path of “service quality” to “user satisfaction” showed marginal significance (P=.08) under the 92% CI. Finally, the explanatory power of the model reached 68.9%. Conclusions Support from the top management, appointment of a nurse supervisor as the change agent, recruitment of seed members to establish a pioneer team, and promotion of the system through the influence of opinion leaders in small groups were critical success factors needed for implementing the system in the case hospital. The target system was proven to be able to improve work performance, and the time saved could be further used for patient care, thereby increasing the value of nursing work. The positive experiences gained from this study could lay the foundation for the further promotion of the new system, and this is for future studies to replicate. The example of the successful experience of the case hospital could also serve as a reference for other hospitals in developing countries like Taiwan with regard to the promotion of nursing informatization.