EMR Case Studies

Regions: North Slave Region

Tags: health, health care evaluation, electronic health record

Principal Investigator: Shaw, Nicola T (1)
Licence Number: 14401
Organization: University of Alberta
Licensed Year(s): 2008
Issued: Jul 22, 2008
Project Team: Shelby Mitchell (Co-Investigator, University of Alberta), Dr. Kevin Leonard (Co-Investigator, University of Toronto), Dr. Grace Paterson (Co-Investigator, Dalhousie University), Dr. Andrew Grant (Co-Investigator, Universite de Sherbrooke), Bill Pascal (Co-Investigator, Canadian Medical Association)

Objective(s): The purpose of this research is to provide physicians with practical information on best practices and lessons learned with regards to implementation and use of electronic medical record (EMR) systems in ambulatory clinical practice settings.

Project Description: The licence has been issued for the scientific research application #843. The purpose of this research is to provide physicians with practical information on best practices and lessons learned with regards to implementation and use of electronic medical record (EMR) systems in ambulatory clinical practice settings. Methods employed in this study include an online survey, one face-to-face interview with a clinician or office staff whose responsibilities involve interaction with some aspect of the EMR, and direct observation of clinicians and office staff by a trained researcher. The researcher will spend one to two days at the participating clinic, with the length of time dependent on the size of the clinical care practice. One in-depth interview will be conducted at the site with an individual whose responsibilities involve interaction with the EMR. The interview will be based on open-ended questions and the length of interviews will be between one and two hours. The interview will be audio recorded; participants will be informed of this and will show their consent to audio record by signing the consent form. The audio recording will be transcribed offsite by a transcriptionist who has signed a confidentiality agreement. The researcher will maintain the database in accordance with stringent data protection and management requirements to protect the confidentiality of the data and to prevent unauthorized use or access. No personal health data will be recorded at any time. Information that is obtained during the survey will be kept anonymous and confidential. The individual responses will only be analyzed and reported in aggregate. The survey results may be used as a guide to our evolving open-ended interview format. The results of the case study will be published nationally in the Canadian Medical Association’s journal Future Practice, as well as on their website. The clinic will receive a report of their results prior to the Future Practice publication. We will also send the clinic a copy of our final report based on aggregate data of all participating sites from across Canada. Fieldwork will be conducted between August 01 and September 31, 2008 in Yellowknife.