The need for a thoughtful deployment strategy: evaluating clinicians' perceptions of critical deployment issues.
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.
Meyer
K E
KE
Northwest Center for Cooperative Studies in Health Services, VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, USA. kemey@u.washington.edu
Altamore
R
R
Chapko
M
M
Miner
M
M
McGann
M
M
Hill
E
E
Van Duesen-Lucas
C
C
Bates
M
M
Weir
C
C
Lincoln
T
T
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