Afetlerde Bilgi ve Teknoloji Yönetimi: G.Antep ve K.Maraş Hastanelerinde Bir Alan Araştirmasi Information And Technology Management At Disasters: A Field Research In G.Antep And K.Maraş Hospitals

According to the definition of United Nations, disaster is defined as “a serious disruption of the functioning of society, causing widespread human, material, or environmental losses which exceed the ability of affected society to cope using only its own resources”. Disasters destroy not only the physical capital but also human and social capital (Dynes, 2005). Emergency management, on the other hand, is defined as “applying science, technology, planning, and management to deal with extreme events that can injure or kill large numbers of people, do extensive damage to property, and disrupt community life” (Drabek, 1991). It is of critical importance for hospitals to sustain their functionality and to be resilient during disasters. In order to achieve this, hospitals must have an efficient information and technology management infrastructure. Information and technology management refers to the process that facilitates organizations to meet their goals, that improves the effectiveness of organizational functions, and that optimizes the relationships between the organization and its internal and external customers. It is of great importance for the information and management resources and tools to enable the organizations achieve their goals by efficient and rational management of these resources (Ogut, 1999). The capabilities provided by the information and communication technologies are the main resource for all types of organizations, including the hospitals. The prior research indicates that information and technology infrastructure facilitates the information sharing in hospitals and enables to create quality information. Therefore, information and technology management practices in hospitals should be reliable and continuous not only in normal situations but also in disasters. In this study, information and technology management process that have critical importance in hospitals during disasters was investigated. The study examines the level of the continuity hospitals’ information technology infrastructure shows and the extent to which hospitals are able to meet their information needs. In the context of this study, a survey was conducted in public and private hospitals located in Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras provinces in Turkey. The survey was sent to fifty hospitals operating in these provinces. Of these fifty hospitals, forty five have returned the survey which leads us to have a response rate of 90%. The survey was structured to have two sections: capabilities related to information management and capabilities related to information technology infrastructure. The survey was developed based on several resources in prior literature (TTB, 2009; Top et al., 2010; Bharadwaj, 2000; Brown, 2001). The survey questions were measured with five point Likert type scale (1 = Strongly disagree, 5 = Strongly agree). In data analysis, statistical methods, such as percent, frequency analysis, and independent samples t-test, were used. The data analysis was done by SPSS 17.0 statistical software package. Sixty seven percent of the hospitals operate in the province of Gaziantep, while thirty three percent of the hospitals operate in the province of Kahramanmaras. Also, sixty percent of the hospitals are public sector hospitals and forty percent of the hospitals are private sector hospitals. On an average, the survey responders state that they agree with the statements concerning several information management capabilities (e.g., ability to do registration and acceptance transactions when the computer system is