Many developedc ountries arec onfronted with continuously increasing healthcarecosts.Mostadministrations believe that afundamental reorganizationof theh ealthcares ector is inevitable. Transformationp rocessesa re oftene nabled by informationand communicationtechnologies. Forhealthcare, aplethoraofeHealth strategies have been proposed,m anyo ft hemb eing aimeda tr educingh ealthcare costsbyoptimizingadministrativeprocesses. Although lots of strategies have been proposed,t here is al ack of

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... guidelinef or settingu pt ransformationp rojects successfully.Since many healthcaresystems arecharacterized by ahighdegreeauf autonomy andm anyl ocal regulations,asituationala pproach fors ettingu p transformationp rojectsi sn ecessary.I nc hangem anagementa sw ella si nm ethod engineering, situationala pproaches have been proposed. Butt here aref ew publications on howt oc ombine situationalc hangem anagementw ith situational method engineering. Regardinga pplying such an approach to healthcare, therei s no work at all. Thereforet he aimo ft hisp aper is to proposea' situationalc hange engineering' frameworkf or theh ealthcares ector.T hree stepsa re essential: (1)t o classify change projectsi nt he healthcares ector with regard to certain transformationa ttributes,( 2) to identifyreusablem ethod fragmentsthathavebeen deployed in change projectsofacertain type,and (3)todevelop aprocedurewhich creates as ituationalm ethod from appropriatem ethodf ragments fort he respective type of change.Inadditiontooutlining this approach,ahypothesisfor thefirst step is presented, i.e. aschemeisdevelopedtoclassify change projectsinthe healthcare sector.T he papere nds with ar ecommendationf or implementingt he 'situational change engineering' frameworkinthe healthcaresector.