結論：
本研究證實市場因素並未能對醫院技術創新造成直接性的影響，而醫院規模、醫院權屬、教學狀態才是影響醫院技術創新性的關鍵，此外本研究亦證實醫院技術創新確實會影響醫院績效，由此可見，醫院技術創新性的提升亦是醫院欲提升競爭優勢時的重要途徑。 Background and Objective:
Hospitals have faced the rapid environmental changes and the more competitive market in recent years, so innovation has become the key element to improve their environmental adaptability and competitive advantage. This research attempted to take Taiwanese hospitals as the sample. We aimed at exploring the antecedents of technological innovation and its influence on hospital performance.
Methodology:
We conducted an cross-sectional design. The data were obtained from four secondary databases: “Taiwan Hospital Annual”, “Statistical Yearbook of the Interior” of Taiwan Hospital Association, and “registry for contracted medical facilities” and “registry for contracted beds” of National Health Insurance Research Database in the year 2005. We adopted descriptive analysis, t-test, correlation matrix, logistic regression analysis and structural equation modeling (partial least squares) to analyze our research data.
Results:
We found that hospital scale will influence technological innovation positively, the level of technological innovation of private hospital is higher than one of public hospitals, and the technological innovation of non-teaching hospitals is also significantly higher than one of teaching hospitals. Results also showed that technological innovation would influence ambulatory performance (daily outpatient visits), emergency performance (daily emergency visits), inpatient performance (occupancy rate of acute beds) positively.
Conclusion:
This research confirmed that market factors are failed to have direct impact on the technological innovation of hospitals, and hospital scale, hospital ownership and teaching status are the critical factors to affect technological innovation. In addition, this study also confirmed that technological innovation will indeed affect hospital performance. Therefore, the promotion of technological innovation is an important way to improve the competitive advantage for the hospitals.
