Are profitable hospitals more digitally mature? An explorative study using data from the German DigitalRadar Project

Public investment in hospitals in Germany has been insufficient for decades, making it difficultto finance digitization. Due to dual financing, hospitals could alternatively use their own profitsto pay for digitization efforts. This raises the question of whether there is a relationship betweenprofitability and digitization, i.e., whether profitable hospitals are more digitally mature, and whatother factors might influence digital maturity. To investigate this relationship, we use novel data ondigital maturity of German hospitals and combine them with balance sheet data. Our multivariateregression results do not show a robust correlation between profitability and digital maturity.Rather, being part of a large chain seems to be more important for digitalization. We concludethat hospitals in chains are more digitally mature because they benefit from a standardizationof IT infrastructure and internal policies. Individual hospitals may also benefit from centralizingparts of their IT strategy development.