Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Informatics
Date Submitted: Aug 30, 2024
Date Accepted: May 26, 2025
Health information systems’ support for management and changing work: Survey study among physicians
ABSTRACT
Background:
Digitalization has changed physicians’ clinical work, work environment, management work and use of tools for leadership. Many physician leaders have been critical of the capabilities of health information systems to support for leadership, management, and knowledge management.
Objective:
We aimed to examine a) the association between leadership position and perceptions of changes in work due to digitalization, and b) whether these perceived changes are associated with perceptions of health information systems as support for management among those who are in leadership position.
Methods:
Altogether 4630 Finnish physicians (64% women) responded to a cross-sectional nation-wide online survey conducted in spring 2021. Perceptions of improved preventive work, facilitated access to patient information, progressed interprofessional collaboration, and accelerated clinical encounters were used as measures of changes due to digitalization. Logistic regression analyses and analyses of covariance were conducted to examine the associations, adjusted for age, gender, and employment sector.
Results:
Physician leaders had greater odds of agreeing that digitalization had improved preventive work (OR = 1.62, 95% CI=1.33-1.98), facilitated access to patient information (OR =1.28, 95% CI=1.09-1.51), progressed interprofessional collaboration (OR =1.81, 95% CI=1.53-2.14), and accelerated clinical encounters (OR =1.31, 95% CI=1.01-1.70) than those in non-leadership positions. Moreover, leaders who perceived these changes positively also considered that health information systems supported their management work.
Conclusions:
Physician leaders appeared to view the changes in work due to digitalization more positively than other physicians. Thus, the leaders need to monitor comprehensively other physicians’ perceptions of their work and its challenges. Moreover, our results show that to guarantee positive views about digitalization among physician leaders, information systems should also support managerial work. This highlights the need to focus on the quality and usability of information systems.
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