The Effect of Unmet Expectations of Information Quality on Post-Acceptance Workarounds among Healthcare Providers

Abstract

Electronic health record (EHR) systems have the capacity to aid clinical decision making by providing timely and relevant information about patients. However, providers’ lack of access to complete and up-to-date information in the required format hinders their ability to make timely decisions and often leads to misdiagnosis or redundant, duplicate tests. This research evaluates the extent to which pre-adoption information quality expectations are met and their effect on post-adoption satisfaction with an EHR system in terms of information quality and the workarounds that they may generate. The hypotheses were empirically tested through analysis of the responses of 64 healthcare stakeholders. The results indicate that lower information quality was perceived post-adoption than was expected at pre-adoption of the EHR system. Ultimately, workarounds were found largely to be a direct result of dissatisfaction with the EHR system. The results have implications for remedies to workarounds in terms of policy, training, and EHR system features modifications.