Patient satisfaction with electronic medical/health record: a systematic review

Facilitators and barriers to satisfaction after implementation of the electronic medical/health record (EMR/EHR) are important to understand as patient satisfaction is linked with improvement in health care and meaningful use of EMR/EHR. The objectives of this systematic review were to evaluate patient satisfaction after implementation and to synthesize available factors regarding the estimates of the patient satisfaction with EMR/EHR. These factors may help vendors to better design EMR/EHR and to assist in providing direction for progression of research in this field.

Data sources for the study included reports of studies from the Medline, Ovid, Springerlink, EBSCOhost, Embase and Wiley Online Library, and searching of bibliographies of review and other articles. Our inclusion criteria were the descriptions of patient satisfaction after implementation of EMR/EHR.

Searching the online database resulted in 1425 articles and 58 articles from reference lists. After removing duplicates and assessing against the selection criteria, 41 articles were for further full-text review. After careful analysis, 33 articles were excluded. Eventually, a total of eight articles met inclusion criteria and were assessed.

These studies showed a positive patient satisfaction with EMR/EHR, but more rigorous studies should be carried out to more precisely quantify and describe the impact of EMR/EHR on patient satisfaction. Due to many factors influencing patient satisfaction with EMR/EHR, more research is needed to understand these factors before more concrete measurements of satisfaction can be developed to help researchers develop effective evaluation satisfaction.