The State of the Art of IT Governance and Types of IT Decision Makers in German Hospitals - An empirical study among IT Decision Makers in German Hospitals

Growing expenses for health care services in hospitals stress the potential of a well applied IT governance for cost reduction, productivity gains and a possible source for competitive advantages. The underlying explorative study analyses the current status of IT governance through a survey among 206 IT decision makers in German hospitals. The quantitative ana-lyses show that the most important requirements of IT managers for IT are the optimization and standardization of processes, that IT investments shift from administrative to medical IT applications, and that private hospitals display relatively higher IT budgets than do non-profit or public hospitals based on financial turnover. Further, two types of future IT decision makers are empirically identified. The types differ in their future role as initiators for process opti-mization and the degree of involvement in strategic decision making.