ABSTRACT
Introduction What makes not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals interesting is that they provide similar services and are impacting the community through outreach to patients with a presumed interest in quality of care and service. Yet, literature has shown that the two diverge in many aspects of performance, possibly due to differences in ownership, management style, specialty services, physicians present, etc. To add to this literature, it will be important to analyze changes and differences between
these management characteristics across various healthcare providers and see how they are using and incorporating health information technology (HIT) into their infrastructure, assuming organizational behavior differences. Incentives to adopt have been on the national agenda, including funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2008, which brought about the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act with funding and subsidies for organizations that want to adopt HIT. Besides the financial motivation to access HIT, the issue has been on the agenda since the late 1990s and the electronics age of the past decade. While it may seem like a heated issue because funds are involved, it is actually considered a bipartisan issue, and one of the few pieces of legislation to be introduced by former President George W. Bush, and now reaffirmed in importance by President Barack Obama. Government sees importance in HIT because it may revitalize as well as standardize healthcare systems such that effectiveness and efficiency to both patients and the communities will be provided, which is a major necessity during a period of healthcare reform and changes to come.
