The effect of hospital information system components on hospital preference

Health and health services have special importance in the sustenance of human life. In addition, individuals are getting more selective in their choices for health service providers, an attitude that has resulted in a wide research area pertaining to this choice. This present study has been planned to investigate the backstage contribution of Hospital Information Systems (HIS) in patients? selections.A total of 153 patients in two hospitals were interviewed by the use of a questionnaire prepared for this purpose.The questionnaire consisted of, in addition to descriptive questions (one about preference for the next visit), 10 items (each with respect to a subsystem of HIS) to measure satisfaction (gap score), 19 questions to determine the problems faced by the patient during the hospital stay and 15 SERVQUAL items. Analyses for reliability and validity were made. The new scale had a Cronbach's Alpha value of 0.973 ((%95 CI 0.970?0.989). Statistical content validity calculations resulted in a correlation coefficient of 0.843 (95% CI 0.798?0.888) between the new scale and the SERVQUAL scale. This value was 0.922 (95% CI 0.885-0.959) for those not encountering any problems during the hospital stay and 0.808 (95% CI 0.738-0.878) for the rest. Another evaluation of content validity was made by associating the HIS subsystem questions with the problems encountered by the patient. Patient satisfaction (and thus hospital preference) has been found to be related to the performance of HIS. Thus, special attention should be paid to the modeling, structuring and operation processes of HIS.