Empirically testing determinants of hospital BPR success.

Purpose: Business process reengineering has been touted in the literature as a dramatic improvement necessary for organization competitiveness, but in practice there are many unsuccessful cases. Thus, there is need for a more systematic and rigorous assessment of the factors deemed important to project success. The main objective of this study is to examine this issue.

Design/methodology/approach: For this research, success has been defined as the benefits the hospital has derived from the BPR project, according to top managers' opinions. A sample of 192 hospital administrators shared their organizations' experience with their last BPR project implementation, where the changes have been operational for at least one year.

Findings: Based on the results, recommendations are made for hospital managers to focus attention and resources on factors important to BPR project success. In general, hospitals are not emphasizing some of the most important activities and tasks recommended in the BPR literature, such as changes to customer/market-related business processes, the value-added element of every business activity, and applying the right innovative technology.

Originality/value: Based on the findings as a whole, it behoves top managers not to engage in BPR before ensuring the presence of the success factors found to be important.