title: Developing a Workflow Composite Score to Measure Clinical Information Logistics. A Top-down Approach.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Availability and usage of individual IT applications have been studied intensively in the past years. Recently, IT support of clinical processes is attaining increasing attention. The underlying construct that describes the IT support of clinical workflows is clinical information logistics. This construct needs to be better understood, operationalised and measured.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  It is therefore the aim of this study to propose and develop a workflow composite score (WCS) for measuring clinical information logistics and to examine its quality based on reliability and validity analyses.
  
  
  METHODS
  We largely followed the procedural model of MacKenzie and colleagues (2011) for defining and conceptualising the construct domain, for developing the measurement instrument, assessing the content validity, pretesting the instrument, specifying the model, capturing the data and computing the WCS and testing the reliability and validity.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Clinical information logistics was decomposed into the descriptors data and information, function, integration and distribution, which embraced the framework validated by an analysis of the international literature. This framework was refined selecting representative clinical processes. We chose ward rounds, pre- and post-surgery processes and discharge as sample processes that served as concrete instances for the measurements. They are sufficiently complex, represent core clinical processes and involve different professions, departments and settings. The score was computed on the basis of data from 183 hospitals of different size, ownership, location and teaching status. Testing the reliability and validity yielded encouraging results: the reliability was high with r(split-half) = 0.89, the WCS discriminated between groups; the WCS correlated significantly and moderately with two EHR models and the WCS received good evaluation results by a sample of chief information officers (n = 67). These findings suggest the further utilisation of the WCS.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  As the WCS does not assume ideal workflows as a gold standard but measures IT support of clinical workflows according to validated descriptors a high portability of the WCS to other hospitals in other countries is very likely. The WCS will contribute to a better understanding of the construct clinical information logistics.
authors.forename: J D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Liebe
authors.affiliation: Prof. Dr. Ursula Hübner, Health Informatics Research Group, Hochschule Osnabrück, Department of Business Management and Social Sciences, P.O. Box 1940, 49009 Osnabrück, Germany, E-mail: u.huebner@hs-osnabrueck.de.
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Hübner
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Straede
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Thye
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019985:Benchmarking / Q000379:methods*; D005858:Germany; D063005:Health Information Systems / Q000145:classification / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000145:classification* / Q000592:standards*; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000379:methods*; D057188:Workflow
keywords: Clinical workflows; IT support; clinical information logistics; composite score; validation; workflow management