Primary care and hospital doctors’ experiences of prescribing information transfer using a shared electronic patient medical record system

• Rationale, aim and objective Uppsala county council has implemented a shared electronic patient medical record (e-PMR) system between primary and secondary care. Uppsala is one of the first counties in Sweden to implement such a system, and has the largest number of affiliated health care users with a shared e-PMR. The aim of this study was to investigate primary care and hospital doctors’ experiences of using the shared e-PMR, regarding information about individual patients’ drug therapies between the health care levels.Method Semi-structured focus groups were conducted. Four groups were held with hospital and four with primary care doctors. Data were analysed from an interpretivist perspective, aiming at capturing the physicians’ perspective. They were coded, categorised and similar categories grouped into themes. The constant comparative method was used; all new data were compared to earlier data and earlier analyses, and categories were formed and reformed throughout the analysis. After analysis of the data from the separate groups, a mixed focus group was held with doctors from both primary care and hospital, in which the earlier findings were discussed, to explore variations in the data. The analysis was informed by the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom hierarchy, where a differentiation is made between raw facts (data) and their conversion into, for example, a useful form for a particular context (knowledge).Results The shared e-PMR was perceived as having many advantages, especially as all information was available electronically, which was convenient and time saving. The large amount of information, however, made it difficult to handle. The sought-after knowledge could be hard to retrieve in an information overload. Information about a patient’s drug therapy was not always collected in the medication list; additional information could be found in the e-PMR-notes, given by the patient or in the list of the patient’s automated medication dispensing service. Doctors did not summarize information as often, instead cross-referencing information that could be found elsewhere in the e-PMR.Conclusions The information in the e-PMR needs to be structured in a comprehensible way to facilitate reading and knowledge production. It is not just about providing information, the knowledge needs to be communicated in a good way to the next care-giver.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper -- Samhällsfarmaci och klinisk farmaci (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Basic Medicine -- Social and Clinical Pharmacy (hsv//eng)

Keyword

computer-assisted drug therapy

prescription drugs

physician’s practice patterns

drug prescriptions

computerised medical records systems

continuity of patient care

hospital medication systems

drug utilisation review

Community pharmacy services

Samhällsfarmaci

Social Pharmacy

Samhällsfarmaci

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

ovr (subject category)