The impact of electronic medical records on the work process of outpatient care: Extracting use-cases of paper-based medical records using a time process study

Abstract

The goal of this study is to measure the impact of electronic medical records on both time efficiency and the work process with regard to outpatient care. In this study, we focus on examining the pre-assessment ahead of the introduction of the electronic medical records procedure applying new methodology, time process study. We extracted 12 use-cases and 82 actions in relation to paper based medical records at an outpatient department at a university hospital using time process study. The results suggest that, for nurses, indirect management of patients accounted for a higher proportion of the use-cases than was the case for direct care.