Patients typically enter the healthcare systems at the primary care level from where they are further referred to specialists or hospitals as necessary. In the private healthcare system, primary care is provided by a general practitioner (GP). A GP will refer a patient to a specialist for treatment when necessary, while the GP remains the main healthcare provider. The provision of care is, thus, fragmented which results in continuity of care becoming a challenge. Furthermore, the majority of healthcare providers continue to use paper-based systems to capture and store patient medical data. However, capturing and storing patient medical data via electronic methods, such as Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), has been found to improve continuity of care. Despite this benefit, research reveals that smaller practices are slow to adopt electronic methods of record keeping. Hence this explorative research attempts to identify factors that affect the lack of adoption and meaningful use of EMRs in general practices. Four general practices are surveyed through patient and staff questionnaires, as well as GP interviews. Socio-Technical Systems (STS) theory is used as a theoretical lens to formulate the resulting factors. The findings of the research indicate specific factors that relate to either the social, environmental or technical sub-systems of the socio-technical system, or an overlap between these sub-systems. It is significant to note that within these sub-systems, the social sub-system plays a key role. This is due to various reasons revealed by this research. Furthermore, multiple perceptions emerged from the GP and patient participants during the analysis of the findings. These perceptions may have an influence on the adoption and potential meaningful use of an EMR in a general practice. Additionally, the socio-technical factors identified from this research highlight the challenges related to encouraging the adoption and meaningful use of EMRs. These challenges are introduced by the complexities represented by these factors. Nevertheless, addressing the factors will contribute towards improving the rate of adoption and meaningful use of EMRs in small practices.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9814 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Masiza, Melissa |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment and Information Technology |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MTech |
| Format | ix , 184 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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