How to Select an Electronic Health Record System That Healthcare Professiona...( CHICAGO Feb. 5 /- In recent years Ele...),Health

CHICAGO, Feb. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- In recent years, Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have been promoted by industry and government as a means of improving patient care and controlling costs. However, actual adoption of EHRs has been lower than expected due to general resistance related to implementation costs, security, privacy, and systems integration. Recent studies have shown, however, that many of these adoption barriers pale in comparison to basic usability and productivity concerns. Simply put, healthcare professionals have found many EHRs too difficult to use.

Why has EHR usability remained an issue even as more organizations deploy these systems? To explore this topic, the Chicago-based user research firm User Centric inspected dozens of publicly available Requests for Proposal and procurement guidelines for EHRs to learn how usability was addressed. This inspection revealed that EHR usability was overlooked or only marginally mentioned in nearly all of the documents. Only three documents discussed usability or user experience in any substantive way. Thus, there was a gap between the need for improved usability in EHRs and a lack of usability criteria in the EHR procurement cycle.

To bridge this gap, User Centric proposes an approach for specifying usability requirements and assessing EHR systems relative to these requirements. The User Centric white paper, "How to Select an Electronic Health Record System the Healthcare Professionals Can Use," identifies a five-step process for specifying and measuring the usability of EHR systems. These steps are intended to help guide selection of an EHR that meets the criteria for high levels of effectiveness, efficiency, and subjective satisfaction among healthcare providers. User Centric believes that EHR systems selected in this manner
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