Digitalization process
Vision/ Goal
In terms of digital transformation, public hospitals follow the recommendations of the Ministry of Health (MoH). For private hospitals HIMMS certification is not the major focus.
Public: ”We entered the digitalization path by recommendation of the  Ministry of Health.” (Pubhosp7)
Private: “Private Hospitals are turning into digitalization depending on their own decisions, there is no direction from the Ministry of Health.” (Prvhosp6)
The process for digitalization of healthcare services is started by forming a team led by the Chief  Physician or someone from Quality or IT.
Public : “We started the process  by forming committees under the leadership of the chief physician with the recommendation of the Provincial Health Directorate” (Pubhosp1)
Private: “Our hospital management acknowledge the importance of this and follows current developments in the digitalization area. We have established a separate office that deals with the digitalization process.” (Prvhosp1)
Training / Adaptation
In terms of training programs and adaptation of digitalization of healthcare services, first, the units that were willing to adopt digitalization quickly received the training programs, and over time training programs were expanded to other departments. Resistance to digitalization occurred among physicians who believe that they did not need a system that tells them what to do. It took about 2 -3 months to adopt the technology.
Public: “Every innovation brings resistance . Our busiest area is the emergency room. That’s why the adaptation took sometime in this unit but now no one would agree to go back to the past. Everyone working in the unit is very satisfied.” (Pubhosp8)
Private: “We established an academy for these training programs and it only dealt with this field. It provides in-house trainings. As in every institution, there would be strong resistance in some units, but everyone who adapted the system was satisfied now” (Prvhosp5)
Implementation /Expansion
With respect to implementation & expansion, in the past the level 6 HIMMS certification required only one unit to be digitalized but now it requires  50% digitalization of the hospital. The HIMMS level 7 certification requires about 100 % digitalization of the hospital along with the case presentations.
Public: “We started digitalization process with a single unit and continued to expand it to the entire hospital. Pharmacy was the most important part of digitalization. Therefore, we first established the closed loop medicine system to easily track the stock of medicines and minimize the errors.” (Pubhosp5).
Private: “Investment in digitalization process was the corporate strategy and required significant investment. In our hospital digitalization started in the busy unit so that we could get fast results” (Prvhosp8)