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

Abstract

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.