Study: Leadership, 'buy-in' vital to HIT success

If you want your practice to reap benefits from electronic health records (EHRs), computerized provider order entry, and clinical decision-support systems, it’ll take strong leadership and staff “buy-in.” So conclude researchers from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology (HIT) after reviewing 154 recent studies on the topic.

Sixty-two percent of the studies reviewed were judged to have positive findings related to HIT, and 92% drew conclusions that were judged to be positive overall although they demonstrated something negative about HIT, found Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, PhD, director of the Office of Economic Analysis, Evaluation, and Modeling in the ONC, and colleagues.

Much of the research showed that smaller practices and organizations are starting to see the benefits of HIT, the investigators said, although in some cases user dissatisfaction remains an obstacle to realizing the full benefits of HIT. More studies must document the challenges of technology implementation and offer solutions for those challenges, they conclude.