A Qualitative Exploration of Workarounds Related to the Implementation of National Electronic Health Records in Early Adopter Mental Health Hospitals

Gloria Ser, Ann Robertson and Aziz Sheikh

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Aims: To investigate the perceptions and reported practices of mental health hospital staff using national hospital electronic health records (EHRs) in order to inform future implementations, particularly in acute mental health settings. Methods: Thematic analysis of interviews with a wide range of clinical, information technology (IT), managerial and other staff at two early adopter mental health National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in London, UK, implementing national EHRs. Results: We analysed 33 interviews. We first sought out examples of workarounds, such as delayed data entry, entering data in wrong places and individuals using the EHR while logged in as a colleague, then identified possible reasons for the reported workarounds. Our analysis identified four main categories of factors contributing to workarounds (i.e., operational, cultural, organisational and technical). Operational factors included poor system integration with existing workflows and the system not meeting users' perceived needs. Cultural factors involved users' competence with IT and resistance to change. Organisational factors referred to insufficient organisational resources and training, while technical factors included inadequate local technical infrastructure. Many of these factors, such as integrating the EHR system with day-to-day operational processes, staff training and adequate local IT infrastructure, were likely to apply to system implementations in various settings, but we also identified factors that related particularly to implementing EHRs in mental health hospitals, for example: EHR system incompatibility with IT systems used by mental health–related sectors, notably social services; the EHR system lacking specific, mental health functionalities and options; and clinicians feeling unable to use computers while attending to distressed psychiatric patients. Conclusions: A better conceptual model of reasons for workarounds should help with designing, and supporting the implementation and adoption of, EHRs for use in hospital mental health settings.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077669 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 77669&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0077669

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077669

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().