Improving quality of service of home healthcare units with health information technologies

Information management goals and process failures during home visits for middle-aged and older adults receiving skilled home healthcare services after hospital discharge: a multisite, qualitative study

BACKGROUND

Middle-aged and older adults requiring skilled home healthcare ('home health') services following hospital discharge are at high risk of experiencing suboptimal outcomes. Information management (IM) needed to organise and communicate care plans is critical to ensure safety. Little is known about IM during this transition.

OBJECTIVES

(1) Describe the current IM process (activity goals, subactivities, information required, information sources/targets and modes of communication) from home health providers' perspectives and (2) Identify IM-related process failures.

METHODS

Multisite qualitative study. We performed semistructured interviews and direct observations with 33 home health administrative staff, 46 home health providers, 60 middle-aged and older adults, and 40 informal caregivers during the preadmission process and initial home visit. Data were analysed to generate themes and information flow diagrams.

RESULTS

We identified four IM goals during the preadmission process: prepare referral document and inform agency; verify insurance; contact adult and review case to schedule visit. We identified four IM goals during the initial home visit: assess appropriateness and obtain consent; manage expectations; ensure safety and develop contingency plans. We identified IM-related process failures associated with each goal: home health providers and adults with too much information (information overload); home health providers without complete information (information underload); home health coordinators needing information from many places (information scatter); adults' and informal caregivers' mismatched expectations regarding home health services (information conflict) and home health providers encountering inaccurate information (erroneous information).

CONCLUSIONS

IM for hospital-to-home health transitions is complex, yet key for patient safety. Organisational infrastructure is needed to support IM. Future clinical workflows and health information technology should be designed to mitigate IM-related process failures to facilitate safer hospital-to-home health transitions.

Information technology skills and training needs of health information management professionals in Nigeria: a nationwide study

There is a lack of effective health information management systems in Nigeria due to the prevalence of cumbersome paper-based and disjointed health data management systems. This can make informed healthcare decision making difficult. This study examined the information technology (IT) skills, utilisation and training needs of Nigerian health information management professionals. We deployed a cross-sectional structured questionnaire to determine the IT skills and training needs of health information management professionals who have leadership roles in the nation's healthcare information systems (n=374). It was found that ownership of a computer, level of education and age were associated with knowledge and perception of IT. The vast majority of participants (98.8%) acknowledged the importance and relevance of IT in healthcare information systems and many expressed a desire for further IT training, especially in statistical analysis. Despite this, few (8.1 %) worked in settings where such systems operate and there exists an IT skill gap among these professionals which is not compatible with their roles in healthcare information systems. To rectify this anomaly they require continuing professional development education, especially in the areas of health IT. Government intervention in the provision of IT infrastructure in order to put into practice a computerised healthcare information system would therefore be a worthwhile undertaking.

Discretionary use of family practice information systems: an empirical examination in Turkey

This study examined the antecedents and consequences of the discretionary use of the family practice information systems (FPIS) by family physicians in Turkey. A structured survey was conducted among family physicians located in Kahramanmaras, a southern province in Turkey. The partial least squares (PLS) method was used to analyse the survey data. Findings showed that (1) physicians' discretionary use of FPIS is positively related to their perceived value of patient care; (2) physicians' computer self-efficacy is positively related to their discretionary use of FPIS; (3) physicians' innovativeness in information technology (IT) is positively related to their computer self-efficacy; and (4) physicians' innovativeness in IT does not significantly impact on their discretionary use of FPIS. The present study's findings revealed that physicians should be adequately informed about the discretionary use of FPIS, and policies should be established to improve family physicians' understanding and competence of information systems, including computer self-efficacy.