Normalisation of electronic medical records in routine healthcare work amidst ongoing digitalisation of the Philippine health system

Romeo Luis A. Macabasag, Eunice U. Mallari, Patrick Joshua C. Pascual and Portia Grace H. Fernandez-Marcelo

Social Science & Medicine, 2022, vol. 307, issue C

Abstract: By drawing perspectives from the multi-level perspectives in sociotechnical transition and the normalisation process theory, this article explores how ongoing (i.e., incomplete) national level reforms in health information management (HIM) shape the normalisation of electronic medical records (EMRs) in Philippine rural health work. Based on document review, interviews, and observations, we argue that an ongoing HIM regime transition—transitioning from paper-based to an electronic HIM regime—may exert ambivalent institutional pressures on health workers through their institutions’ implementation context. The ambivalence of the implementation context—one that accommodates both EMR and paper-based medical records—offers conflicting social, cognitive, and material resources for normalising EMRs. In such a context, we find that health workers performed selective participation and partial implementation in normalising EMRs in their routine healthcare work. In selective participation, select health workers—often, the technologically savvy—could actively participate in the EMR implementation while others focused on their clinical work. At the same time, since only a few could use the EMR in routine work, EMRs were implemented partially in particular instances where it is deemed more valuable and applicable. We emphasised in this article how complementing the idea of normalisation with sociotechnical transition may reveal the emergence of pressures from various institutions and stakeholders that advances (or impede) the normalisation of healthcare innovations.

Keywords: Health information management; Transition; Normalisation; Primary care; Electronic medical records; Paper medical records; Philippines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115182

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