The status of IT service management in health care - ITIL® in selected European countries

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making

Research Article

Werner O Hackl¹  Elske Ammenwerth¹  Roland Blomer¹  Alexander Hoerbst² 

[1] Institute for Health Information Systems, UMIT - University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Eduard-Wallnoefer-Zentrum 1, Hall in Tirol, Austria;Research Division eHealth and Telemedicine, UMIT - University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Eduard-Wallnoefer-Zentrum 1, Hall in Tirol, Austria;

关键词: Information Technology;    Business Process;    Service Management;    Health Care Organization;    Health Care Context;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6947-11-76

 received in 2011-03-08, accepted in 2011-12-21,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDue to the strained financial situation in the healthcare sector, hospitals and other healthcare providers are facing an increasing pressure to improve their efficiency and to reduce costs. These trends challenge health care organizations to introduce innovative information technology (IT) based supportive processes. To guarantee that IT supports the clinical processes perfectly, IT must be managed proactively. However, until now, there is only very few research on IT service management especially on ITIL® implementations in the health care context.MethodsThe current study aims at exploring knowledge about and acceptance of IT service management (especially ITIL®) in hospitals in Austria and its neighboring regions Bavaria (Germany), Slovakia, South Tyrol (Italy) and Switzerland. Therefore highly standardized interviews with the respective head of information technology (CIO, IT manager) were conducted for selected hospitals from the different regions. In total 75 hospitals were interviewed. Data gathered was analyzed using descriptive statistics and where necessary methods of qualitative content analysis.ResultsIn most regions, two-thirds or more of the participating IT managers claim to be familiar with the concepts of IT service management and of ITIL®. IT managers expect from ITIL® mostly better IT services, followed by an increased productivity and a reduction of IT cost. But only five hospitals said to have implemented at least parts of ITIL®, and eight hospitals stated to be planning to do this in the next two years. When it comes to ITIL®, Switzerland and Bavaria seem to be ahead of the other countries. There, the highest levels of knowledge, the highest number of implementations or plans of an implementation as well as the highest number of ITIL® certified staff members were observed.ConclusionThe results collected through this study indicate that the idea of IT services and IT service management is still not widely recognized in hospitals in the countries and regions of the study. It is also indicated that hospitals need further assistance in order to be able to successfully implement ITIL®. Overall, research on IT service management and ITIL® in health care is rare.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Hoerbst et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011