Affiliations: School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang 150000, China
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Yan Li, School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, No. 2 Yikuang Street, Nangang District, Harbin, Heilongjiang 150000, China. Tel.: +86 18099993047; E-mail: yanlily.lihit@gmail.com.
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Quality control system is one of the hospital information systems. The adoption of quality control system increases the work efficiency; however, to some extent, it also increases the workload for physicians. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of the quality control system on quality of care (e.g., process and outcome performance). METHODS: Our study collected physicians’ behavior information from a large urban hospital in China. We constructed the fixed-effect model to examine the relationship between the quality control system adoption and quality of care. RESULTS: Using the quality control system has a significant (p< 0.001) and negative effect on patients’ stay length in the hospital (process performance). Furthermore, using the quality control system has a significant (p< 0.001) and positive effect on the trends of cure rate in the hospital (outcome performance). The coefficient of the dependent variable from the patients’ stay length (process performance) is lower than the trends of cure rate (outcome performance). CONCLUSIONS: The controlling system can improve medical quality even though it limits physician behavior to some extent. The controlling system improves both the process performance and outcome performance, and it brings more benefits to outcome performance rather than process performance which means the reflection of the new technology may have more evident on outcome variables.
Keywords: Quality control system, process quality, physician’s behavior change, hospital information system
