[This article was originally published in Healthcare Policy / Politiques de Santé 5(2).]

Objectives: To determine the factors associated with the use and impact of performance data relevant to women's health.

Methods: We developed a survey on six levels of information use based on Knott and Wildavsky's (1980) policy utilization framework and used this survey to determine Ontario hospital administrators' use of women's health report indicators. We related responses to this survey to six potentially relevant organizational factors, such as women's health as a written hospital priority, a women's health program and hospital budget size, using correlation and multiple-regression analysis.

Results: Only women's health in a written hospital priority (p=0.01) and hospital budget (p=0.02, log transformed) were significantly associated with the highest level of use when all organizational factors were considered.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that the use of women's health performance indicators is strongly related to the size of the hospital budget and to organizational commitment to women's health.

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