moving toward an outcome based management style of functioning.
This means that healthcare executives and practitioners will take
actions that worked in the past to make them more effective. They will
perform therapies or treatments on the patients based on the patient's
history as well as on past success of an individual therapy. In other
words, healthcare practitioners are moving toward a medical practice
that is going to be more of a science and less of a craft. Practitioners are
trying harder to prevent the occurrences of diseases or sicknesses. It is
the so-called evidence-based medical practice which requires
accumulation of patients' medical records electronically. Such practice
will drive healthcare costs down and will make it more affordable for
Americans by providing better treatment to the patients rather than
more treatment. The U.S. healthcare system is also moving in the
direction of providing quality and affordable healthcare to all
Americans who do not have insurance by limiting and/or prohibiting
insurers from limiting or denying coverage based on pre-existing
conditions.
Another trend of the U.S. healthcare system is in the direction of
reform. Studies indicate that in the future U.S. businesses will become
more involved in educating people about healthcare (Flower, 1996)
rather than simply bargaining for cheaper rates for healthcare.
Businesses will work with people at different levels, such as
government, education, and other sectors, to try to educate people
about how to live a healthy lifestyle. Expectations are that the federal
government, state government and businesses will join hands in
5. Implications
The following section explains some of the theoretical and
practical implications of this study that could lead the direction for
future research.
5.1. Implications for researchers
The proposed model (Fig. 1) incorporates two theoretical frameworks
— diffusion of innovation (DOI) and technology acceptance
model (TAM). The IT uses and IT/IS roll out have demonstrated the
assimilation of an innovation in terms of “diffusion.” However, these
processes may not be as in-depth as the researchers anticipated. This
study provides some explanations and examinations regarding the
development of innovative ideas in healthcare organizations and
how they roll out. These explanations are of interest to healthcare
professionals as well as to academicians.
This study provides several implications for researchers. Those
implications are: (1) a need for in-depth examination of the assimilation
gap in different settings of healthcare service providers when an
implementation heavily involves a top down approach bymanagement
(Liang et al., 2007); (2) future study should focus on the proposed
practicalmodel in Fig. 1 and development of an instrument that provides
a summary that clarifies the assimilation patterns and influences on
decision-making patterns, functional integration, and promotion of
collaboration (Bajwa et al., 2008); and (3) future study should focus on
the operational performance factors that provide the most efficient,
sufficient and proactive business processes that comply with both