Assessing factors that affect the implementation of electronic medical records (EMR) system in government owned hospitals in Addis Ababa.
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Date
2010-06
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Addis Abeba University
Abstract
Background: To provide health services for the increasing Ethiopian population the government has increased the number of health facilities. To offer efficient and effective health services, however, patients’ medical record keeping or management system is very important. In line with this, some developed countries have undertaken the transition to Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system. Despite this fact, however, Ethiopia has not gone far in this aspect, and most hospitals are still documenting on paper based medical records, which is time consuming and sometimes even difficult to find. As a result, there is time when physicians are treating patients without having patients’ background information of their past medical treatments. Therefore, it is very important and timely to look into why our hospitals are not using Electronic Medical Records (EMR).
Objective: The general objective of the study was to assess factors that affect
implementation of EMR in government owned hospitals in Addis Ababa.
Methods: A cross-sectional study design were used and health professionals and key informants in ten government owned hospitals and the only two nongovernmental hospitals that have fully implemented EMR, were assessed using questionnaire and interview on issues of health professionals attitude, budget, trained manpower, management commitment, availability of technology and other related to EMRimplementation.
A Simple random sampling technique was used to select health professionals, depending on the population sizes of their hospitals and all key informants were selected purposively. Accordingly, a total of 399 health professionals and 12 key informants from each hospital have participated in the study. Data analysis was done using chi-square test, mean, t-test and odds ratio. EPI-INFO version 3.3 and SPSS version 11.0 was used to enter, clean, and analyze the data.
Results - The majority 328 (92.1%) of health professionals in government hospitals support implementation of EMR in their hospitals. Among the variables analyzed, respondents’ age, sex, occupation, education status, having computer training,experience, type of organization and level of communication between employees and management were not found to significantly (p>0.05) affect health professionals attitude to support EMR implementation.
Among government hospitals selected for this study only one hospital is in testing stage to implement EMR, while the remaining nine hospitals have not implemented EMR. Among the factors analyzed, except lack of budget, all were not found to significantly affect the implementation of EMR.
Conclusions - From the findings of the study it is concluded that except lack of budget, other factors like employees’ attitude, management commitment, technology and lack of trained manpower were not found to be significant factor to affect the implementation of EMR in government hospitals. If budget is secured it is possible to implement EMR in government hospitals.
Recommendations - Based on the findings of the study providing sufficient budget to EMR implementation, hospitals to generate income, financial subsidy or donating to implement EMR, strengthening the existing programs on EMR implementation, effective trainings and discussions with users and supporting domestic EMR software suppliers are recommended.
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Keywords
Electronic medical records ,system