An exploratory study to determine factors impacting outsourcing of information systems in healthcare

An exploratory study to determine factors impacting outsourcing of information systems in healthcare

Due to increasing costs, many countries are
experiencing public and political pressure to reform their
health sectors. Some common problems encountered in
healthcare include long waiting lists, lack of availability of
medical practitioners, high costs involved in the
medication processes, insufficient infrastructure to access
and unsatisfactory levels of performance by healthcare
providers. While governments are aware of these
problems, they are unable to balance many of these
problems in order to provide quality service to the
public. However, in many countries, including Australia, a
solution to some of the healthcare problems is found in the
form of 'outsourcing' a myriad of services, including
Information Systems. In recent months, Information
Systems outsourcing has produced conflicting outcomes,
with some claiming there is significant cost savings in
addition to improved quality of service, and others
claiming failures of outsourcing. What appears to be a
common theme in both successes and failures of
outsourcing is the context in which it is applied, the control
exercised by themanagement, the level of participation and
the knowledge possessed by vendors. Literature indicates
that while the Australian healthcare sector has outsourced
many of its services (such as pathology) successfully to
external vendors, the current state of information systems
services outsourcing is under researched. This exploratory
research would investigate those factors that have an
impact on information systems outsourcing on Australian
healthcare in order to develop an initial conceptual model.