Eric W. Ford

There are 50 included publications by Eric W. Ford :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Aligning Strategic Orientation with Information Resources. 2013 2838 In today’s digital society, technology-based resources are emerging and changing far more rapidly than organizational systems and structures. While information management is critical to strategy at both the formulation and implementation stages, st...
Assessing Differences Between Realized and Anticipated Gains from Electronic Health Record Adoption 2009 1554 Return on investment (ROI) concerns related to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are a major barrier to the technology‘s adoption. Physicians generally rely upon early adopters to vet new technologies prior to putting them into widespread use. Therefo...
Attitudes of Organized Labor Officials toward Health Care Issues: An Exploratory Survey of Alabama Labor Officials 1999 2493 Delegates to the Alabama AFL-CIO Convention were surveyed concerning their attitudes toward their health benefits and various options for health care reform. Most are satisfied with their current health care coverage, but dissatisfied with its high c...
A Collaborative Product Commerce Approach to Value-based Health Plan Purchasing 2007 4612 Purpose – Collaborative product commerce (CPC) techniques are being applied with greater frequency in the health care sector. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential barriers to their success in influencing cost and quality. Design/met...
Communication Clarity in Strategic Management Date Sources 2005 1917 Researchers often use organizational documents as source material without considering that measurements of organizational attributes might vary according to the document type used. We examine the communication clarity, described by sensitivity and sp...
Community Based Coalitions‘ Capacity for Sustainable Action: The Role of Relationships 2007 1386 Given both the importance and difficulty of promoting community-based public health coalitions, their capacity for sustainable action merits systematic examination. The current study addresses this need, focusing specifically on the relational dimens...
Community of Scholars: An Exploratory Study of Management Laureates 2002 1414 Social network analysis is an important research tradition in structural sociology and has contributed much to our understanding of inter and intra organizational relations. Of particular significance is the contribution of social network analysis to...
Economic Implications of Defined Contribution Health Plans: Their Impact on Employers, Insurers, Employees, and Healthcare Providers 2002 1689 Employee health benefits are a major payroll expense for companies that provide them. During the 1980s and 90s, many employers moved workers into managed care programs to control costs. However, the ability of those mechanisms to contain healthcare i...
The Effect of Information Technology (IT) Investments on Firm-Level Performance in the Healthcare Industry 2008 5270 Background: The return on investment for information technology (IT) has been the subject of much debate throughout the history of management information systems research. Often referred to as the productivity paradox, increased IT investments have n...
Entrepreneurship in the Board Room: Board Roles in Managing Innovation and Risk 2007 1520 Today’s competitive health care markets demand innovation and risk taking on the part of organizations. However, increased government regulation and stiffer penalties enacted in the wake of recent high -profile corporate scandals and the resulting Sa...
Environmental factors and health information technology management strategy. 2011 3688 Background: Previous studies have provided theoretical and empirical evidence that environmental forces influence hospital strategy. Purposes: Rooted in resource dependence theory and the information uncertainty perspective, this study examined the ...
Experiences with electronic health records: Early adopters in long-term care facilities 2012 4149 Background: Electronic health records (EHRs) are becoming a required technology across the health care sector. Long-term care (LTC) facilities have lagged other settings in adopting health information technologies but represent an area where signific...
Experiencing Job Burnout: The Roles of Positive and Negative Traits and States 2004 8114 Extending recent research efforts on the effects of personality and moods at work, this study examined the impact of personality traits and mood states in job burnout. Specifically, the field study examined the role of 2 personality traits and positi...
Governance's Role in Local Health Departments' Information System and Technology Usage 2012 6128 Objective: The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between local health departments' (LHDs') governance structures and their use of information systems (IS) and information technologies (IT). As the US health system moves toward mo...
Health departments’ implementation of public health’s core functions: an assessment of health impacts 2005 4693 Objectives. The purpose of this article was to investigate the relationship between state health agencies’ adherence to the recommendations of the United State’s Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) report, ‘The Future of Public Health’, and changes in thei...
HIT Management Research and the Tip of the Iceberg: Setting a Research Agenda – A Commentary 2011 1415 In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) was signed into law. This Act, part of the broader “stimulus” legislation, represents the U.S.'s largest investment in health information technology (HIT) to dat...
Hookah Smoking: Behaviors and Beliefs among Young Consumers in the United States. 2014 4421 Hookah smoking is growing in popularity among college-age students in the United States. Community-based, semistructured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 college-age individuals who had used a hookah to smoke tobacco. A structured analysis...
Hospital Characteristics Associated With Achievement of Meaningful Use 2014 2690 The objective of this study was to identify factors associated with hospitals that achieved the Medicare meaningful use incentive thresholds for payment under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009. We...
Hospitals Responses to Leapfrog in Local Markets 2008 1620 The Leapfrog (LF) initiative, directed at improving patient safety in hospitals, may be the most ambitious, coordinated attempt to date on the part of large employers to shape the delivery of health care in America. This article assesses the role of ...
The Impact of Health System Membership on Patient Safety Initiatives 2008 2615 Background: Research in configurations and strategic groups has a rich history of revealing performance differences for hospitals and health care systems. Purposes: To assess the relationship between hospital-led health system configurations and the...
Implementing electronic lab order entry management in hospitals: Incremental strategies lead to better productivity outcomes 2013 3806 This paper evaluates the impact of varying implementation of electronic lab order entry management (eLAB) system strategies on hospitals’ productivity in the short run. Using the American Hospital Association's Annual Surveys for 2005–2008, we develo...
Incomplete EHR Adoption: Late Uptake of Patient Safety and Cost Control Functions 2007 2060 Many functions important to realizing the full potential from electronic health records (EHRs) may not be selected by all physicians using EHRs in the ambulatory setting. This article examines the extent to which EHR systems used by Florida physician...
The Influence of Payer Mix on Electronic Health Record Adoption by Physicians 2007 2844 Background: Numerous studies have examined the relationship between physician practice characteristics and electronic health record (EHR) adoption. Little is known about how payer mix influences physicians‘ decisions to implement EHR systems. Purpos...
The Information Superhighway: Are Management Faculty Still Parked in the Driveway? 2001 1207 The Internet, which began as a vehicle for scholars to convey ideas in an open forum, in real time and free of geographic confines, currently is viewed as a World Wide Web of computer networks carrying everything from books to stock trades almost at ...
Information Systems and Healthcare XXIX: Information Technology Investments and Returns – Uniqueness in the Healthcare Industry 2008 2345 The way in which information technology (IT) impacts firm productivity is an enduring question in organizational research and practice. Rather than adopting the common explanation that IT spending improves organizational performance, we hypothesize...
IT outsourcing and firm-level performance: A transaction cost perspective 2009 4662 We analyzed the effect of the level of low asset specificity IT outsourcing on firm-level financial performance. We used transaction cost economics (TCE) as the theoretical basis to explain the effect of the level of network and telecommunication ser...
Market factors and electronic medical record adoption in medical practices 2012 4028 Background: Previous studies identified individual or practice factors that influence practice-based physicians’ electronic medical record (EMR) adoption. Less is known about the market factors that influence physicians’ EMR adoption. Purpose: The a...
Overcoming challenges to achieving meaningful use: insights from hospitals that successfully received Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services payments in 2011 2012 1809 Objective In an effort to understand better the federal electronic health record (EHR) incentive programme's challenges, this study compared hospitals that did and did not receive meaningful use (MU) payments in the programme's first year based on th...
Patient Safety: State-Of-The-Art in Health Care Management and Future Directions 2008 3166 The needs for health system change and improved patient safety have been pointed out by policymakers, researchers, and managers for several decades. Patient safety is now widely accepted as being fundamental to all aspects of health care. The questio...
Patient Satisfaction Scores and Their Relationship to Hospital Website Quality Measures 2013 2813 Hospitals and health systems are using web-based and social media tools to market themselves to consumers with increasingly sophisticated strategies. These efforts are designed to shape the consumers' expectations, influence their purchase decisions,...
Payer Mix and EHR Adoption in Hospitals 2012 4670 Payers are known to influence the adoption of health information technology (HIT) among hospitals. However, previous studies examining the relationship between payer mix and HIT have not focused specifically on electronic health record systems (EHRs)...
Perspectives on Strategic Thinking and Entrepreneurial Action in the Health Care Industry 2007 3464 Strategy and entrepreneurship have long been seen as separate realities to many scholars. In near-caricature form, the first has been seen as focused on large firms using explicit strategic planning methods supported by increasingly sophisticated inf...
Planning for Hospital IT Implementation: A New Look at the Business Case 2008 2293 Compared to organizations in other industries, hospitals are slow to adopt information technology (IT). Those planning for system implementation must understand the barriers to IT adoption which, in healthcare, include the relatively high acquisiti...
Predicting the Adoption of Electronic Health Records by Physicians: When Will Health Care be Paperless? 2006 3560 Objectives: The purpose of this study was threefold. First, we gathered and synthesized the historic literature regarding electronic health record (EHR) adoption rates among physicians in small practices (ten or fewer members). Next, we constructed m...
Predicting Computerized Physician Order Entry System Adoption in US Hospitals: Can the Federal Mandate Be Met? 2008 2897 Objectives: The purpose of this study is four-fold. First, the hospitals‘ current level of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) adoption is reported; second, internal and external influence factors‘ roles in determining CPOE adoption rates are d...
Promise and problems with supply chain management approaches to health care purchasing 2007 4604 Background: Double-digit health care inflation, coupled with widespread reports of poor care quality and deadly medical errors, has caused private sector employers to reevaluate their health benefits purchasing strategies, with a focus on supply chai...
Realizing the Value Proposition: A Longitudinal Assessment of Hospitals’ Total Factor Productivity 2011 1614 U.S. hospitals are under continual pressure both to increase productivity and to improve quality through the use of Health Information Technology. This paper analyzes 3,187 US hospitals, using data reported to the American Hospital Association, to as...
The Relationship Between Local Hospital IT Capabilities and Physician EMR Adoption 2009 1836 In light of new federal policies allowing hospitals to subsidize the cost of information systems for physicians, we examine the relationship between local hospital investments in information technology (IT) and physician EMR adoption. Data from two F...
Resistance Is Futile: But It Is Slowing the Pace of EHR Adoption Nonetheless 2009 2222 The purpose of this study is to reassess the projected rate of Electronic Health Record (EHR) diffusion and examine how the federal government's efforts to promote the use of EHR technology have influenced physicians' willingness to adopt such system...
The Role of Disease Management in Pay-for-Performance Programs for Improving the Care of Chronically Ill Patients 2006 1637 To date, pay-for-performance programs targeting the care of persons with chronic conditions have primarily been directed at physicians and provide an alternative to health plan-sponsored chronic disease management (DM) programs. Both approaches requi...
The Role of Safe Practices on Hospitals’ Total Factor Productivity. 2011 1145 The dual aims of improving safety and productivity are a major part of the health care reform movement hospital leaders must manage. Studies exploring the two phenomena conjointly and over time are critical to understanding how change in one dimens...
Shovels, Trowels, and Ice Cream Scoops: In Search of the Right Tool to Explain Scientific Management 2002 2445 Each term, when covering the history of management, many students have difficulty identifying with “ancient” management figures such as Frederick Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. Even in Birmingham, Alabama, the former “Pittsburgh of the South,...
Strategic Management and Performance Differences: Nonprofit versus For-Profit Health Organizations 2004 12810 Despite mixed and contradictory findings, for-profits (FPs) and nonprofits (NPs) are assumed to be similar health services organizations (HSOs). In this study, a fifteen-item scale assessing HSO’s strategic management capacity was developed and teste...
Strategy and Structure: A Learning Perspective and Analysis 2014 4064 This paper integrates the strategy and structure constructs using organizational learning theory. Learning theory is refined by arraying strategic and structure constructs along a path dependent, concatenated, continuum that is congruent with the ori...
The Structure of State Health Agencies: A Strategic Analysis 2003 6862 Leaders in public organizations are adopting many private sector management practices to control costs and increase efficiency. Nowhere is this more evident than among state health agencies. State health agencies were encouraged to change the way the...
Sustainable Network Advantages: A Game Theoretic Approach to Community-Based Health Care Coalitions 2004 3278 Health care organizations often enter into a cooperative arrangement to create safety-net programs and coordinate care. Maintaining effective cooperation in such alliances poses special problems that can be examined using network analysis and explain...
A synthesis of HCMR’s health information technology articles (2000–2011) 2012 1786 The current issue of HCMR features articles invited to a special call for articles on “Health Information Technology and Management in the Era of Reform.” The articles build on the strong heritage of HCMR authors whom have long studied health informa...
Technological iatrogenesis: New risks force heightened management awareness 2008 3166 Iatrogenesis is a term typically reserved to express the state of ill health or the adverse outcome resulting from a medical intervention, or lack thereof. Three types of iatrogenesis are described in the literature: clinical, social and cultural. Th...
Testing the hospital value proposition: An empirical analysis of efficiency and quality 2008 2711 Purposes: To assess the relationship between hospitals’ X-inefficiency levels and overall care quality based on the National Quality Forum’s 30 safe practices score and to improve the analytic strategy for assessing X-inefficiency. Methodology: The ...
Tracing the Evolution of Pluralism in Community-Based Coalitions 2004 1622 In this study, a crisis of leadership succession led to greater subsequent pluralism by the previously less inclusive coalition. Substantial tension existed between both coalitions and the federally funded Appalachia Cancer Network, especially around...