title: Rating the digital help: electronic medical records, software providers, and physicians.
abstract: To separate the effects of physicians' characteristics on the perceived productivity of EMRs from the effects of limitations on usability inherent in EMR design, a multivariate regression model is used to estimate the factors influencing physicians' rankings of five attributes of their EMRs, namely; ease of use and reliability; the EMRs effect on physician and staff productivity and the EMRs performance vs. vendor's promises. We divide the factors influencing the rankings into three groups: physician characteristics, EMR characteristics and practice characteristics (type of practice, size, and location). The data are from approximately 1800 practicing physicians in Arizona. Physician's characteristics influence perceived ease of use and physicians' productivity, but not staff productivity, reliability or vendors' promised performance. Practice type and EMR characteristics affect perceived productivity, reliability and performance versus vendors' promises. Vendor-specific effects are highly correlated across all five attributes and are always jointly significant. EMR characteristics are the most significant influence on physicians' perceptions of the EMRs effect on their productivity and that of their staff. Physicians' characteristics (particularly age) have a small but significant influence on perceived productivity.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Informatics, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA. richard_butler@byu.edu.|Department of Economics, Brigham Young University, 183 FOB, Provo, UT, 84062, USA. richard_butler@byu.edu.
authors.forename: Richard J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Informatics, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.
authors.forename: William G
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D001130:Arizona; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010820:Physicians; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software / Q000592:standards*
keywords: EHR; EMR; Ease of use; Physician perceptions; Productivity