JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Timely and comprehensive collection of patient’s medication history in the emergency department (ED) is crucial to optimizing healthcare delivery. The implementation of a medication history sharing program, which entitled "Patient’s In-home Medications at a Glance,” in a tertiary teaching hospital aimed to efficiently collect and display nationwide medication histories for patient’s initial hospital visits.

Objective:

As an evaluation was necessary to provide a balanced picture of the program, we aimed to evaluate both clinical outcomes and humanistic outcomes encompassing end-user experience of physicians and pharmacists.

Methods:

To evaluate the clinical outcomes, we measured the time from the first ED assessment to urgent PCI initiation from electronic health records. To assess end-user experience, we developed a 22-survey questionnaire using a 5-point Likert scale, including five domains (information quality, system quality, service quality, user satisfaction, and intention to reuse), validated, and distributed to physicians and pharmacists. The Student’s t-test was used to analyze PCI initiation time, and Structural Equation Modeling was used to assess factors affecting end-user experience.

Results:

The time from the first ED assessment to urgent PCI initiation at the ED was significantly reduced using the patient medication history program (17.2 ± 12.4 mins vs. 10.3 ± 11.0 mins, P=.037). A total of 112 physicians and pharmacists participated in the survey. Among the five domains, “intention to reuse” received the highest score (4.77 ± 0.37), followed by “user satisfaction” (4.56 ± 0.49), while “service quality” received the lowest score (3.87 ± 0.79). “User satisfaction” was significantly associated with “information quality” and “intention to reuse.”

Conclusions:

Timely and complete retrieval using a medication history-sharing program led to improved clinical outcomes by expediting critical decision-making in the ED, thereby contributing to value-based healthcare delivery in a real-world setting. The experiences of end-users, including physicians and pharmacists, indicated satisfaction with the program regarding information quality and their intention to reuse.