Knowledge Bank

We look at the impact of two important dimensions of the process of adoption (sequence and intensity) for Electronic Medical Record (EMR) technologies on cost and quality of care at hospitals. Sequence of adoption is captured in terms of two approaches: the depth-first approach which adopts department level integrative technologies first and the breadth-first approach which adopts organization wide integrative technologies before completing department level integration. Intensity of adoption represents the pace of addition of technologies. Results indicate that the depth-first approach performs better at lower intensity of adoption while the breadth-first approach performs better at higher intensity of adoption.