In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law. This legislation provided for monetary rewards for those acute-care hospitals that meet "meaningful use" computerization and reporting criteria.
The study used a descriptive, nonexperimental design to answer three research questions (1) What is the level of readiness to meet "meaningful use" criteria in the Tennessee Hospital Association (THA) member hospitals; (2) What is the level of readiness to meet "meaningful use" criteria in the rural THA member hospitals; and (3) Is there a difference in the readiness to meet "meaningful use" criteria between rural and urban THA member hospitals?.
A survey was sent to 115 THA member hospital, with a return rate of 83% (N=95). The inclusion criteria focused on acute-care hospitals, with rehabilitation, psychiatric and long-term care hospitals falling into the exclusion criteria.
The Readiness Score was determined for the total survey respondents (N=95), as well as for the rural (N=41) hospitals and urban (N=54) hospitals in the Tennessee Hospital Association member hospitals meeting the inclusion criteria. Z-scores of the readiness score were examined and indicated that there was one outlier with z>3.0. Therefore, that case was removed from the comparison in the t-test (N=94). The t-test comparison of rural and urban hospital found a significant difference at (p=.002), two tailed.
To ensure that the slightly nonnormal distribution of the readiness scores did not explain the difference found with the t-test, an additional nonparametric test was also conducted. The Mann Whitney U-test showed that even with the assumption of a normal distribution is not made, the difference in readiness between urban and rural hospitals is still statistically significant at p=0.026.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-2642 |
| Date | 05 May 2012 |
| Creators | Wilhoit, Kathryn Wallin |
| Publisher | Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University |
| Source Sets | East Tennessee State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright by the authors. |
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