What Affects Clinicians' Usage of Health Information Exchange?

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Workflow Optimization
• Healthcare Policy

Background:

• Electronic health information exchange (HIE) aims to improve care coordination and reduce costs.
• Provider-to-provider data exchange is a key goal of national healthcare legislation.
• Factors influencing clinician adoption of HIE functionality remain largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify factors influencing clinician usage of health information exchange (HIE).
• To examine frequency of data contribution and access within aggregate patient records.
• To propose policies for promoting HIE adoption and effective utilization.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study employing grounded theory.
• Interviews with 15 clinician users and 5 health information exchange (HIE) staff.
• Analysis of transcribed interviews to identify influential factors.

Main Results:

• Clinician motivation for HIE access is driven by perceived quality improvements and time savings.
• HIE usage is moderated by data gaps, workflow integration challenges, and usability concerns.
• Variability in HIE access and data contribution intensity observed, influenced by billing and time constraints.

Conclusions:

• Integrating HIE into clinical workflows is crucial for both clinicians and vendors.
• Policies should incentivize HIE organizations to support clinicians and measure usage.
• Incentives are needed to encourage clinician data contribution to HIE systems.