Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records for Physician Collaboration: A Patient Centered Health Care Perspective

EHRs (Electronic Health Records), can contribute greatly to improving care and managing the rising costs of healthcare. The use and the integration of EHRs (Electronic Health Records) in supporting collaboration to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare remains a challenge. It appears that the physicians are at the center of this bottleneck. As healthcare is provided by interdisciplinary teams of clinicians and collaboration and coordination are key to success. Literature suggests reasons for the limited use relate to policy, financial and usability considerations, but it does not provide an understanding of reasons for physicians´ limited interaction and adaptation of EHR. This paper investigates how “meaningful use” of EHRs by physicians enable patient centered healthcare to be achieved. Following an analysis of qualitative data, collected in a case study at a hospital using interviews, this research shows how a collaborative technology architecture can enable the reduction in the costs of healthcare and improvements in the quality of care by enabling more patient centered health care.