Patients' satisfaction with the quality of care upon implementation of electronic health records system at the 37 Military Hospital, Ghana

Abstract

Background: To resolve delays faced by patients when accessing health services, the electronic health records system (EHRs) was introduced as part of the health management information system (HMIS) to enhance the quality of care.

Objective: This study assessed patients' satisfaction with the quality of care upon the implementation of the electronic health records system at the 37 Military Hospital in Ghana.

Methods: The study adopted a cross-sectional study design using a quantitative method. A simple random sampling method was applied to recruit 228 outpatients who were seeking healthcare at the time of data collection to respond to a structured questionnaire. A Chi-square test and logistic regression analysis were used to assess the association between the dependent variable and independent  variables. A p-value of 0.05 at a 95% confidence interval was used as the threshold for statistical significance.

Results: The results showed a high quality of care with respect to attention to patients' needs (M = 3.68, SD = 0.525), the responsiveness of health providers to emergencies (M = 3.81, SD = 0.651), the efficiency of services rendered (M = 3.78, SD = 0.576), timeliness of  healthcare (M = 3.78, SD = 0.576), patient-provider communication (M = 3.42, SD = 0.683) and general patients' care (M = 3.86, SD = 0.528).  Similarly, the results showed high patient satisfaction in relation to waiting time for services (M = 4.32, SD = 0.93), adequacy of attention  from health providers (M = 3.29, SD = 0.98), health provider-patient relationship (M = 3.63, SD = 1.05) and level of service provision after  the implementation of EHRs (M = 3.89, SD = 0.95). Efficiency of services rendered (OR = 0.36, 95% CI; 0.276, 0.653, p < 0.05), timeliness of healthcare (OR = 0.42, 95% CI; 0.153, 0.693, p < 0.05), and general patients' care (OR = 0.43, 95% CI; 0.023, 0.678, p < 0.05) were strong predictors of patients' satisfaction.

Conclusion: The study demonstrated patients' overall satisfaction with the operation of electronic  health records systems. The study recommends that the management of the 37 Military Hospital should continuously improve the quality  of care of the health services to ensure sustained patient satisfaction.