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Leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can contribute to the earlier detection and better treatment of chronic diseases by improving accuracy and accessibility of patient data. The Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) implemented an EHR system in all primary health care clinics (PHCs) as part of mea...

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Autores principales: Hazazi, Ahmed, Wilson, Andrew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8157615/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34044767
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-021-01456-2
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author Hazazi, Ahmed
Wilson, Andrew
author_facet Hazazi, Ahmed
Wilson, Andrew
author_sort Hazazi, Ahmed
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can contribute to the earlier detection and better treatment of chronic diseases by improving accuracy and accessibility of patient data. The Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) implemented an EHR system in all primary health care clinics (PHCs) as part of measures to improve their performance in managing chronic disease. This study examined the perspective of physicians on the current scope and content of NCDs management at PHCs including the contribution of the EHR system. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 physicians working in chronic disease clinics at PHCs covering a range of locations and clinic sizes. The participants were selected based on their expertise using a combination of purposive and convenience sampling. The interviews were transcribed, analyzed and coded into the key themes. RESULTS: Physicians indicated that the availability of the EHR helped organise their work and positively influenced NCDs patient encounters in their PHCs. They emphasised the multiple benefits of EHR in terms of efficiency, including the accuracy of patient documentation and the availability of patient information. Shortcomings identified included the lack of a patient portal to allow patients to access information about their health and lack of capacity to facilitate multi-disciplinary care for example through referral to allied health services. Access to the EHR was limited to MOH primary healthcare centres and clinicians noted that patients also received care in private clinics and hospitals. CONCLUSION: While well regarded by clinicians, the EHR system impact on patient care at chronic disease clinics is not being fully realised. Enabling patient access to their EHR would be help promote self-management, a core attribute of effective NCD management. Co-ordination of care is another core attribute and in the Saudi health system with multiple public and private providers, this may be substantially improved if the patients EHR was accessible wherever care was provided. There is also a need for enhanced capacity to support improving patient’s nutrition and physical activity.
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spelling pubmed-81576152021-05-28 Leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia: a qualitative study Hazazi, Ahmed Wilson, Andrew BMC Fam Pract Research BACKGROUND: Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can contribute to the earlier detection and better treatment of chronic diseases by improving accuracy and accessibility of patient data. The Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) implemented an EHR system in all primary health care clinics (PHCs) as part of measures to improve their performance in managing chronic disease. This study examined the perspective of physicians on the current scope and content of NCDs management at PHCs including the contribution of the EHR system. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 physicians working in chronic disease clinics at PHCs covering a range of locations and clinic sizes. The participants were selected based on their expertise using a combination of purposive and convenience sampling. The interviews were transcribed, analyzed and coded into the key themes. RESULTS: Physicians indicated that the availability of the EHR helped organise their work and positively influenced NCDs patient encounters in their PHCs. They emphasised the multiple benefits of EHR in terms of efficiency, including the accuracy of patient documentation and the availability of patient information. Shortcomings identified included the lack of a patient portal to allow patients to access information about their health and lack of capacity to facilitate multi-disciplinary care for example through referral to allied health services. Access to the EHR was limited to MOH primary healthcare centres and clinicians noted that patients also received care in private clinics and hospitals. CONCLUSION: While well regarded by clinicians, the EHR system impact on patient care at chronic disease clinics is not being fully realised. Enabling patient access to their EHR would be help promote self-management, a core attribute of effective NCD management. Co-ordination of care is another core attribute and in the Saudi health system with multiple public and private providers, this may be substantially improved if the patients EHR was accessible wherever care was provided. There is also a need for enhanced capacity to support improving patient’s nutrition and physical activity. BioMed Central 2021-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8157615/ /pubmed/34044767 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-021-01456-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Hazazi, Ahmed
Wilson, Andrew
Leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia: a qualitative study
title Leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia: a qualitative study
title_full Leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia: a qualitative study
title_fullStr Leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia: a qualitative study
title_full_unstemmed Leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia: a qualitative study
title_short Leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in Saudi Arabia: a qualitative study
title_sort leveraging electronic health records to improve management of noncommunicable diseases at primary healthcare centres in saudi arabia: a qualitative study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8157615/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34044767
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-021-01456-2
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