Introduction and Background

Integration of healthcare and

financial information: Evaluation
in a public hospital using a
comprehensive approach
The lack of integration of information systems in hospitals is a consequence of using numerous
Systems and applications this in turn tends to produce data redundancy and overlapping
functionalities. Making the coordination of organisational processes difficult.
enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are well accepted in hospitals insofar as they provide
direct benefits in daily work and facilitate tasks; that said, there also tend to be hostile reactions to
ERP systems, because they introduce control mechanisms into daily work and usually require
prominent process re-engineering.
In recent years, healthcare organizations have been using new technologies to automate and improve
their clinical and business processes. They have increased their interest in investing in Tools that
prioritize the integration of clinical, organizational, and management processes.
The integration of an organisation’s transactional functions allows it to have a unified data
System instead of a group of isolated applications that offer fragmented data, as well as counting
On updated information. This accelerates the communication flow and drives the organisation’s
Internal collaboration. At the same time, it facilitates the decision-making process.

As a consequence of their division into functional areas, traditional information systems focused
on supporting each functional area and only rarely ensured that data flowed smoothly between the
different functional areas. This was aggravated by the fact that the information systems of each
area had, in many cases, been developed independently, with data formats that were incompatible
or did not meet the information needs of the rest of the processes of the business.
An ERP system overcomes these disadvantages by integrating the information from the different
departments and subsidiaries of the company into one single database accessible to the whole
organisation. When a piece of data is entered into the ERP system by any organisational unit, it
is immediately available for use by the rest of the company’s organisational units.
this integration brings about an improvement in the flows of information between the various
organisational units and reduces administrative costs, as fewer tasks have to be performed to obtain
any particular piece of information.

HUFA is assigned to the Madrid Health Service and was founded under Law 15/1997, of 25 April,
which deals with new ways of managing the National Health System. It started operations in
December 1997.

systematic evaluation of an experience of information integration in a health

organisation, HUFA.
The case study focuses on: evaluating the user’s attitude towards the integrated system and its
perceived value, and identifying the changes in the flow of information and improvement in decision
making with the new system in place.

Conclusion
The new system in HUFA fosters a cultural change towards interrelated work systems in
which tasks are shared and common aims are established. This in turn allows the organisation to
improve the quality of the information handled.
The major problems arise in most ERP adoptions because of organisational rather than technical
issues.
In hospitals, ERP systems are welcomed as long as they provide direct benefits to users’ work and
ease their work practices. At the same time, hostile reactions to the ERP system were evident in
HUFA, as it implied control mechanisms of the users’ work and introduced new work tasks
previously performed by others.
The results show how the users’ attitudes and the perceived value of the information system improved
overtime. In this particular case, the users do not perceive the higher integration level of the
information system to be a negative issue. Therefore, hostile reactions could be reduced using the
system and by showcasing that a higher level of integration usually implies a higher level of
performance.
On the other hand, the quality of the decision-making process has also improved, both in the sense of
altering the decision-making process – due to the managers having higher quality information.

HUFA continues to advance towards the design of systems based on the complete integration of
information. This would allow HUFA to have a complete description of all its internal and external
processes with users, institutions, suppliers, and customers in a common platform.