Harnessing information systems in healthcare: The strategic alignment perspective

Strategic alignment between business and information technology (IT) is considered key to maximizing IT impact. Nonetheless, only seldom have exceptional achievements in performance been studied from the viewpoint of the Strategic Alignment Model (SAM). This paper describes a longitudinal case study of a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO), named here MHMO, which serves over 1.7 million members. MHMO's management decided to support strategic business via alignment of business and IT, culminating in the implementation of a business process management (BPM) system to process and display performance measurement. Applying multivariate logistic regression analysis and qualitative analysis, we analyze the improvement in MHMO's clinical performance in comparison to all the HMOs in the country between 2002 and 2005. The results clearly show a greater improvement for MHMO in the period following the BPM system implementation in 2004. Plausible drivers of this achievement are discussed, paying special attention, via the lens of the Strategic Alignment Model, to the alignment between business and IT. Besides this paper's contribution in highlighting how business and IT can be aligned to achieve ambitious strategic goals, it demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of measuring quality of clinical care, generally considered a complex and costly mission.