In the present brazilian context, organizations need to gather information that is useful to support the decision-making process. Information Systems (IS) are tools capable of providing such information. However, most hospitals do not use IS which can adequately aid both the decision-making and the control of activities. The research aimed at analyzing the IS used by a philanthropic hospital located in Belo Horizonte. The aim was to describe the IS and to verify its usefulness. Besides this in-depth study, another three hospitals were also studied in order to compare the IS of four hospitals. It was possible to observe that the case study hospital faces difficulties related to the IS implementation and management, which are in part due to problems related to the organization and control of operational and administrative activities. These difficulties were also observed in the other three studied hospitals, regardless of being or not philanthropic.