Can a hospital’s analytics capabilities impact patient satisfaction? A multi-year panel study

Abstract

An empirical link between organizational performance and the IT necessary to enable data analytics capabilities has not yet been established. Drawing from organization information processing theory (OIPT), which argues that uncertainty and equivocality negatively impact organizational performance, we construct a model in which performance—measured as hospitals’ patient satisfaction—is a function of clinical analytics capabilities, complexity, and concentration. Our argument is that clinical analytics is an uncertainty-reducing mechanism that directly impacts satisfaction. However, we propose a nuanced moderating role of complexity of patient cases and concentration (the mix of procedures performed in a hospital). We show that analytics capabilities increased patient satisfaction, but we also find evidence for the moderating role of complexity on the effect of analytics on satisfaction. The result for the moderating impact of concentration was not significant; however, our post-hoc analysis indicated that the moderating effect was present in larger hospitals.