An Empirical Evaluation of Hospital Project Implementation Success‪.‬

INTRODUCTION Hospitals face intense demands to lower costs, improve quality and expand access to a growing uninsured population. While these multifaceted demands can result in critical consequences to millions of people, health care managers often have difficulty tackling these demands due to their lack of familiarity with management best practices. As Fetter (1991, p. 7) states, "attempts at applying industrial concepts to hospital management date back to the early 1900s. Advances in technology and skyrocketing health-care costs provided the means and the necessity to recommence such efforts." However, "many common management practices in healthcare organizations ... have not been subject to widespread assessment through empirical research," (Kaissi & Begun, 2008, p.197). As a result, healthcare managers frequently lack fundamental knowledge relative to healthcare-specific management to call upon as a platform for success when they face critical project decisions (Knight, 2005; Austin, Homberg, & Shmerling, 2000; Carden & Egan, 2008).