Planning for purchase, intplementation, and use of an automated hospital information system is critical to its success. The planning process involves assessing needs, evaluating alternatives, selecting a system, and implementation support. Although an evaluation of costs and benefits of alternative sysients is useful in planning for and selecting a system, the assessnient can be very coniplex, and the assuniptiorts used in the analysis are critical. Most benefits of autoniatedsystems are the result of intprovedtinieliness, accuracy, and access to inforniation, and these are difficult to value in dollars.