IT-Enabled Revenue Cycle Transformation in Resource-Constrained Hospitals: A Collaborative Digital Options Inquiry

Abstract

Although hospitals increasingly consider solutions based on information technolgy (IT) for revenue cycle management, contextual constraints and numerous IT investment alternatives make it difficult to identify and realize appropriate solutions. Thus far, however, health IT theory has been silent on how IT can support financial and administrative purposes within hospitals, focusing instead on IT for clinical support. Against this backdrop, we report on an action research project involving IT-enabled revenue cycle transformation in a financially strapped rural hospital. Our research contributes to health IT theory by expanding the discourse to include revenue cycle transformation and by demonstrating how resource-constrained hospitals can improve their financial performance through selective investments in low-cost IT solutions across the revenue cycle. We also contribute to action research methodology by generalizing our interventions to propose digital options inquiry—a systematic approach to business process transformation that combines digital options theory with diagnostic process mapping—to help researchers and practitioners jointly understand and transform business processes.

Key words and phrases:

• action research
• collaborative practice research
• digital options inquiry
• health care
• health IT
• revenue cycle management

Supplemental File

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website at 10.1080/07421222.2017.1373005

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rajendra Singh

Rajendra Singh ([email protected]; corresponding author) is a clinical associate professor in the Management Science Department at the Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in computer information systems from Georgia State University. Before joining academia, he worked for over 14 years as a production engineer, business process analyst, software quality consultant, and information technology (IT) project manager in various industries. His research interests include IT-enabled transformation of health-care delivery, health-care operations, and business process innovation. He has published in MIS Quarterly, Journal of the AIS, European Journal of Information Systems, and others.

Vitali Mindel

Vitali Mindel ([email protected]) is a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Process Innovation, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. His research interests center on health information technologies, with a focus on administrative technologies and their role in revenue management in hospitals as well as on the clinical side IT adoption. He has published in the Journal of the AIS.

Lars Mathiassen

Lars Mathiassen ([email protected]) is Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, Professor at the Computer Information Systems Department, and cofounder of the Center for Process Innovation at Georgia State University. His research focuses on development of software and information services, on IT-enabled innovation of business processes, and on management and facilitation of organizational change processes. He has published extensively in major information systems and software engineering journals and has coauthored several books. He has served as senior editor for MIS Quarterly, and serves as senior editor for Information and Organization and for the Journal of Information Technology.