HIS-Monitor: an approach to assess the quality of information processing in hospitals.
OBJECTIVE
Hospital information systems (HIS) are a substantial quality and cost factor for hospitals. Systematic monitoring of HIS quality is an important task; however, this task is often seen to be insufficiently supported. To support systematic HIS monitoring, we developed HIS-Monitor, comprising about 107 questions, focusing on how a hospital information system does efficiently support clinical and administrative tasks.


METHODS
The structure of HIS-Monitor consists of a matrix, crossing HIS quality criteria on one axis with a list of process steps within patient care on the other axis. HIS-Monitor was developed based on several pretests and was now tested in a larger feasibility study with 102 participants.


RESULTS
HIS-Monitor intends to describe strengths and weaknesses of information processing in a hospital. Results of the feasibility study show that HIS-Monitor was able to highlight certain HIS problems such as insufficiently supported cross-departmental communication, legibility of drug orders and other paper-based documents, and overall time needed for documentation. We discuss feasibility of HIS-Monitor and the reliability and validity of the results.


CONCLUSIONS
Further refinement and more formal validation of HIS-Monitor are planned.
Ammenwerth
Elske
E
Institute for Health Information Systems, UMIT, University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall in Tyrol, Austria. elske.ammenwerth@umit.at
Ehlers
Frauke
F
Hirsch
Bernhard
B
Gratl
Gordon
G
D001317:Austria; D006751:Hospital Information Systems / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D019451:Information Management / Q000592:standards*; D011786:Quality Control; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires