IT ambidexterity driven patient agility and hospital patient service performance: a variance approach

TL;DR

This study examines how hospital departments' IT ambidexterity—balancing exploration and exploitation—enhances patient agility and improves patient service performance, based on data from Dutch hospitals.

Contribution

It develops and tests a model linking IT ambidexterity to patient agility and service performance using empirical data and SEM analysis.

Findings

IT ambidexterity significantly boosts patient agility

Patient agility positively impacts hospital service performance

The model provides insights for transforming clinical practice

Abstract

Hospitals are currently exploring digital options to transform their clinical procedures and their overall engagement with patients. This paper investigates how hospital departments can leverage the ability of firms to simultaneously explore new IT resources and practices (IT exploration) as well as exploit their current IT resources and practices (IT exploitation), i.e., IT ambidexterity, to adequately sense and respond to patients' needs and demands, i.e., patient agility. This study embraces the dynamic capability view and develops a research model, and tests it accordingly using cross-sectional data from 90 clinical hospital departments from the Netherlands through an online survey. The model's hypothesized relationships are tested using Partial Least Squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM). The outcomes demonstrate the significance of IT ambidexterity in developing patient agility, positively influencing patient service performance. The study outcomes support the theorized model can the outcomes shed light on how to transform clinical practice and drive patient agility.