Physicians' perceptions about a semantically integrated display for chart review: A Multi-Specialty survey

Abstract

Objective: To assess physicians' perceptions about integrated displays for chart review based on a formal representation of patients' care context.

Methods: We iteratively designed a conceptual prototype of an integrated patient summary and conducted an online survey with a multi-specialty panel of outpatient physicians from a large health system to collect their perceptions of the usefulness of our prototype. Survey questions were responded with a 7-point Likert scale and include two open-ended questions for comments on challenges and suggestions related to electronic health record (EHR) navigation, with which a thematic analysis was performed.

Results: Forty-nine physicians completed the survey. The usefulness of our integrated display was rated slightly positive, and respondents did not consider it confusing. Challenges related to EHR navigation frequently reported by physicians included the need to navigate between multiple functionalities and to manually search for relevant data. The most common suggestions were related to facilitating integration of data from multiple parts of the record to facilitate data visualization and comprehension.

Conclusion: Physicians' rating of usefulness was slightly positive, and several insights to improve EHR navigation were derived from their comments. More effective EHR navigation may be achieved through facilitating integration of data from multiple parts of the record to simplify data retrieval and synthesis.

Keywords: Chart review; Data context; Electronic health records; Outpatient care; Physicians’ perceptions.