Management information systems and technologies in public hospitals

The purpose of the present work was to analyse the importance of the use of information systems and technologies in management procedures in the hospital sector. We therefore intended to evidence the effects of the use of the information produced by means of those instruments in the improvement of management performance and as support to decision-making. In this study, which took place under the Gesiti/Hospital international research project "Evaluation of Management Information Systems and Technologies in Hospitals", we present the results of 5 Portuguese public hospitals on the outskirts of the Greater Oporto region, which we consider a representative sample of the area studied. The case study methodology was used in this research. With the results obtained, we may conclude that the information systems and technologies have acted as a booster mechanism for improvements in productivity and in the performance of hospital organisations. Within these public sector organisations we also found evidence of the adoption of private sector management practices.