Physician use of electronic medical records: issues and successes with direct data entry and physician productivity.
At Intermountain Health Care, we evaluated whether physicians in an ambulatory setting will voluntarily choose to enter data directly into an electronic health record (EHR). In this paper we describe the benefits of an EHR, as they exist in the current IHC application and the ways in which we have sought to minimize obstacles to physician data entry. Currently, of 472 IHC employed physicians, 321 (68%) routinely enter some data directly into the EHR without coercion. Twenty-five percent (80/321) of the physicians use voice recognition for some data entry. Twelve of our 95 ambulatory clinics have voluntarily adopted measures to eliminate paper charts. Of the 212 physicians who entered data in 2004, sixty-nine physicians (22%) increased their level of data entry, while 12 (6%) decreased. We conclude that physicians will voluntarily adopt an EHR system, and will continue and even increase use after implementation barriers are addressed.
Clayton
Paul D
PD
Intermountain Health Care and the Dept of Medical informatics at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Naus
Scott P
SP
Bowes
Watson A
WA
Madsen
Tammy S
TS
Wilcox
Adam B
AB
Orsmond
Garth
G
Rocha
Beatriz
B
Thornton
Sidney N
SN
Jones
Spencer
S
Jacobsen
Craig A
CA
Udall
Marc R
MR
Rhodes
Michael L
ML
Wallace
Brent E
BE
Cannon
Wayne
W
Gardner
Jerry
J
Huff
Stan M
SM
Leckman
Linda
L
D000555:Ambulatory Care Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001292:Attitude to Computers; D003200:Computer User Training; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006801:Humans; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010820:Physicians