THE EFFECT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY QUALITY ON HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY: THE CASE OF PRIVATE GENERAL HOSPITALS IN ADDIS ABABA

Abstract

The quality of information technologies implemented in Ethiopian private hospitals is far more modern and sophisticated than in public health facilities. The adoption of information and communication technology facilitate the provision of quality medical service but couldn’t mitigate the extent of patient’s complaints significantly. The study, thus, sought to investigate the effect of IT adoption on health service quality by taking private general hospitals in Addis Ababa as a case. The study targeted the population of medical staff (physician, nurses, lab technicians, and health officers at 10 private general hospitals. Convenient sampling technique was used for selecting the targets to collect primary data through self-administered questionnaires. The data were encoded and conducted both descriptive and inferential analyses with the help of SPSS 22.0. The findings showed that the five dimensions of health information technology had positive and significant effect on health care service quality. Specifically, information accuracy and relevance had relatively the highest contribution to the service quality. Whereas information integrity, physician-patient interactivity and information timeliness showed the least effect. It can be concluded that adoption of IT technologies facilitates provision of quality healthcare service in private general hospitals in Addis Ababa. It Is recommendable to implement user friendly software application, increase automation and telemedicine platform for easy access in a timely manner.