DO RISK PERCEPTIONS INFLUENCE PHYSICIAN\u27S RESISTANCE TO USE ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS? AN EXPLORATORY RESEARCH IN GERMAN HOSPITALS

IT in health care can lower the cost of health care delivery, improve the quality of care for patients and reduce medical errors.Given these strong advantages, it is interesting that technology diffusion for process support in hospitals is somewhat slow.The major process of a hospital -delivering patient care- is still supported by traditional paper files in the vast majority ofGerman hospitals.In this paper, we ask what the barriers towards implementing and using an electronic medical record (EMR) -the electronicpatient file- might be. Technology resistance theories indicate that perceived risks are a major inhibitor towards systemsacceptance. In the absence of thorough empirical studies, we start our investigation by conducting exploratory research intothe risks hospital-based physicians associate with using an EMR. A list of possible risks was derived from the literature and10 physicians were interviewed to gather their assessment. Our findings show that, indeed, physicians associate several riskswith adopting EMRs, thereby suggesting these risks will need to be mitigated to enable proper user acceptance

An International Comparison of Factors Inhibiting Physicians\u27 use of Hospital Information Systems

Finding ways to strengthen health care systems is a matter of great concern all around the world. Health care operations struggle with limited resources and diminishing workforce capabilities, making it imperative for effective and efficient operations. Hospital information systems (HIS) can help achieve this mission, providing reliable, timely, and relevant information about patient characteristics, reimbursement, and status of tests and quality metrics. However, there are still barriers toward the adoption of HIS by health care professionals. This study explores the inhibitors perceived by physicians for adopting HIS. The main motivation for this research is to answer the question: What are the factors inhibiting physicians\u27 use of Hospital Information Systems? This research question is of great interest as physicians are considered to be the key to successful HIS deployment, adoption and use. This study takes a qualitative research approach, employing ninety-eight (98) interviews at nine different hospitals, complemented by more than 40 hours of workplace shadowing. We conducted our research in the United States, Chile and Germany, as the three countries have developed healthcare systems but take different approaches to fostering the use of IT in hospitals and have implemented at different organizational levels. Our findings show that the alignment of user, system and process is important as expected. However, the results point out that leadership and organizational setting play vital roles, although they were often neglected in previous studies