Key considerations for the adoption and implementation of knowledge management in healthcare operations.

Abstract

The importance of knowledge management (KM) to organizations in today’s competitive environment is being recognized as paramount and significant. This is particularly evident for healthcare both globally and in the U.S. The U.S. healthcare system is facing numerous challenges in trying to deliver cost effective, high quality treatments and is turning to KM techniques and technologies for solutions in an attempt to achieve this goal. While the challenges facing the U.S. healthcare are not dissimilar to those facing healthcare systems in other nations, the U.S. healthcare system leads the field with healthcare costs more than 15% of GDP and rising exponentially. What is becoming of particular interest when trying to find a solution is the adoption and implementation of KM and associated KM technologies in the healthcare setting, an arena that has to date been notoriously slow to adopt technologies and new approaches for the practice management side of healthcare. We examine this issue by studying the barriers encountered in the adoption and implementation of specific KM technologies in healthcare settings. We then develop a model based on empirical data and using this model draw some conclusions and implications for orthopaedics.