Can that work for us? Analysing organisational, group and individual factors for successful health services innovation

Objective: Process innovations can increase efficiency and quality in service organisations. [1,2] Health services organisations have been criticised for being slow to exploit process-management innovations. [3,4] To address perceived deficiencies, this article combines knowledge of factors that improve the Diffusion of Innovation (DoI) in health services organisations [5] with organisational behaviour theory [6] to produce a practical tool to assist health managers and clinicians assess the likelihood of an innovation succeeding in their organisation. Design: Semi-structured interviews were used to identify and analyse organisational, group and individual factors supporting or impeding the implementation of process changes in a public hospital sonography department. Setting: Emergency and imaging departments within a public hospital in New South Wales. Results: Using extant research literature and data collected from the hospital, a checklist was developed to identify factors that aid the implementation of innovations within health services settings. The checklist prompts people responsible for innovation implementation to consider key factors that influence the DoI, identify gaps between the current and desired states and develop action plans to address these gaps. Conclusions: The checklist developed in this article helps health personnel predict the likelihood of innovation adoption, and identify gaps to the ideal state at organisational, group and individual levels. The necessity of conscious change management when implementing innovations is also addressed. Given impending national healthcare reforms, this article is both important and timely.