The Influence of Organizational Contextual Factors on Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Adoption in Selected Hospitals, Southeast Queensland, Australia

Abstract

This study is part of a larger study which investigates the effectiveness of the dissemination of HTA products to its target users at institutional level. This part of the study explores the influence of organizational contextual factors on HTA adoption by healthcare professionals in the hospitals. The method used for this part of the study was via self-administered survey questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using SPSS 20. The statistical analyses used were analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple regression analysis. The findings from ANOVA shows that the contextual variables in all hospitals under study are similar, thus the data collected can be combined to conduct a more robust multiple regression analysis. Regression analysis shows that the organizational contextual factors only explain a total of 20.5% of the variance in the HTA adoption in the selected hospitals. Hence, organizational contextual factors are not the only factors that influence HTA adoption. This unexpected result may be caused by low awareness among healthcare professionals about HTA at hospital level. Thus, HTA agencies need to find better ways of disseminating HTA products to their target users.