title: The need for a thoughtful deployment strategy: evaluating clinicians' perceptions of critical deployment issues.
abstract: This paper presents data collected from 899 clinicians across three Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers where existing terminal-based architecture was being replaced with client-server architecture. Surveys were conducted with physicians (n = 184), nurses (n = 355) and other clinicians (n = 360) gathering user characteristics and their perceptions of five deployment issues (e.g. adequacy of technical and institutional support and perceptions of the soon-to-be-implemented clinical workstation). Mean scores for the five deployment issues for all clinicians indicates perceptions are somewhat neutral. However, when data is analyzed according to job classification, significant (p = 0.05) differences in perceptions were noted among groups of clinicians (e.g., physicians and registered nurses). Results of analyzing data grouped by VA site (n = 3) indicates significant (p = 0.05) differences exist among sites in clinicians' perceptions of the deployment issues. A thoughtful deployment strategy including an in-depth assessment of clinician users by job classification and by location may produce important information, critical to the successful deployment of new technologies, in very large health management institutions.
authors.affiliation: Northwest Center for Cooperative Studies in Health Services, VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, USA. kemey@u.washington.edu
authors.forename: K E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Altamore
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chapko
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miner
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: McGann
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hill
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Van Duesen-Lucas
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bates
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Weir
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lincoln
mesh_terms: D001292:Attitude to Computers; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006751:Hospital Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006787:Hospitals, Veterans; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D008838:Microcomputers; D010564:Personnel, Hospital / Q000523:psychology; D010865:Pilot Projects; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D012984:Software; D014481:United States