$1.6M AHRQ grant to investigate health IT communication

A $1.6 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is supporting a new University of Michigan School of Nursing (UMSN) study that focuses on health IT’s effects on provider communication.

“Communication technology can increase or reduce adverse effects for patients depending on how nurses and physicians are using it,” said lead investigator Milisa Manojlovich, PhD, RN, associate professor at UMSN, in a statement. “Unfortunately, communication failures are one of the most common causes of adverse events for hospitalized patients, so it is very important to understand how communication technology is being used and how it can be improved.”

The study specifically will examine the uses and common failures of communication technologies, such as EHRs, email and pagers by conducting surveys, telephone interviews, observations, shadowing and focus groups at hospitals across the U.S. The research team plans to use these insights to draft their own recommendations for design configurations that will improve the functionality of health IT, according to UMSN.