AHRQ aims to study health IT's impact on workflow
An $800,000 study, proposed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, aims to find out how implementing health IT affects the workflow of practitioners in select small primary care clinics.
The proposed study is described in a notice published in Nov. 1 edition of the Federal Register, as designed "to understand the impact of implementing health IT-enabled care coordination on workflow within small community-based, primary-care clinics in various stages of practice redesign." If the Office of Management and Budget approves the study, researchers with AHRQ contractor RTI International will focus on clinical staff caring for patients with diabetes over a 14-month period at six clinics affiliated with Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.
Each clinic is in a different phase of adopting and using EHR systems for care coordination and workflow redesign. Each clinic will be observed to capture baseline interactions and then again after 12 months to capture interactions later in adoption.
According to the report, each clinic will be observed over a period of 12 months, but the total study period will span 14 months to allow for staggered observation windows for the clinics.
The researchers also plan to gather "spatial data, such as still photographs of the workplace and/or objects in the workplace" to add to observational data, according to the notice. "These will enable the researcher to capture spatial relationships and other dimensions, such as the proximity of workstations, exam rooms and technology. For example, a health IT tool may include the functionality to print information to give to the patient, but if the printer is not conveniently located for the user, busy clinic staff may choose not to use this function."
The study results may help "identify additional workflow components that ambulatory practices should consider when implementing health IT systems," as well as "issues for consideration in the design and evaluation of other health IT tools."
The study notice is available on the Federal Register's website.
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.