AHRQ’s study will focus on clinical staff caring for patients with diabetes within small, primary care clinics to understand enablers and barriers to care coordination workflow through the use of health IT. AHRQ intends to conduct the study over a 14-month period in six Nashville, Tenn.-based Vanderbilt University Medical Center-affiliated clinics that each has an electronic health record. Each clinic is in a different phase of introducing the health IT component of care coordination.
Each clinic will be observed during two time points: the first at zero months to capture baseline interactions, and the second at 12 months to capture interactions later in adoption. According to the report, each clinic will be observed over a period of 12 months, but the total study period will span 14 months to allow for staggered observation windows for the clinics. This approach will generate a detailed understanding of changes in health IT workflow interaction for each clinic over time and across various implementation phases, according to the report.
To determine a need for the study, AHRQ conducted an analysis of existing research and evidence on the relationship between health IT and workflow, its link to clinical adoption and its links to the safety, quality, efficiency and effectiveness of care delivery. AHRQ found a gap in the literature, since most articles focused directly on workflow in large clinics affiliated with academic medical centers and lacked scientifically rigorous design.
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