Cauldwell MR, Beattie CE, Cox BM, Denby WJ, Ede-Golightly JA, Linton FL. The impact of electronic patient records on workflow in general practice. Health Informatics J. 2007 Jun;13(2):155-60.
Cauldwell MR, Beattie CE, Cox BM, Denby WJ, Ede-Golightly JA, Linton FL. The impact of electronic patient records on workflow in general practice. Health Informatics J. 2007 Jun;13(2):155-60.
This paper is a case report with one study site and one control site. It describes the introduction of a point of care personal health record (PHR) functionality of an EMR. The name of this program is Patient Access to Electronic Healthcare Records System (PAERS). This paper also assesses the impact before and after as well as a comparison to an office practice that does not have such a PHR. In particular the study examines patient registration time and clinical consultation time. The setting for the intervention is a single General practitioner outpatient office in the UK in which 53 patients and 5 GPs were the subjects. In the waiting room are two dedicated terminals. The first performs registration and includes fingerprint recognition. The second terminal allows patients to review their medical histories including prior consultation and referral letters. The control group was a similar practice where the subjects were 47 patients and 4 GPs. The results showed that despite the presence of the terminal most patients (38 out of 57) elected to do in person registration. There was no meaningful difference in registration time. There was an approximate 1 min shorter consultation time (10 min) among the 20% of patients who viewed their history prior to their provider encounter.
The most interesting finding was the low utilization of computer based self registration. Additionally although registration times were similar, staff time savings for registration were offset by staff time additions to instruct patients how to do self registration. It appears that among the minority of patients who took advantage of reviewing their histories, less time was spent during their appointment as well as greater patient and provider satisfaction.
reviewed by Mark Binstock Category: BMI-512-F-07]]
