Part 6: Evaluation Plan

Running head: evaluation tool 0

Evaluation Tool

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Evaluation Tool

Conducting the literature review and the evaluation methodology provided an insight into PICO question (Does implementing a new unified acute and ambulatory EHR (Electronic Health Record) system in the hospital, compared to when they are not used, improve the health care quality for the patients through documentation), and obtaining important information about what needs to be considered in a research project, particularly regarding research tool. The research should consider a tool that proves to be reliable and valid. The researcher should want to know if the tool is accurate and measuring what it is intended to measure (Penfold et al., 2011). Picking the wrong tool for research would result in an incomplete result, hence problem with the evidence. Thus, subsequent researchers may not want to use the flawed methodology to conduct their research. The purpose of this paper is to describe the selected evaluation tool for the project with a rationale, to summarize the criteria used in defining evaluation success, and to develop the assessment plan.

The chosen tool for evaluation is the “Electronic Health Record End User Survey” (AHRQ, n.d.). The tool is a questionnaire that focuses on the usability of an EHR. The questionnaire is designed for the clinical staff in the ambulatory setting to evaluate the usability of an electronic health record in ambulatory care. The aim of the assessment tool is to measure the appropriateness of ambulatory care after the implementation of clinical documentation. The device involves various types of a survey that incorporate many stakeholders who ensure that the hospital adopts new technology relating to the improvement of health care within the hospital. The tool is associated with a survey tool for assessing the EHR implementation based on development initiatives guide. The EHR End User Survey measures the effectiveness realized in the hospital setup through documentation as compared to using the old system of documentation. Based on the developed PICO question that aims at evaluating the benefits that subsume the overtaken documentation. The evaluation tool captures various hospital domains including the end users feedback regarding training and competency, usefulness, usability, infrastructure, and the user support. The tool involves the validation efforts based on needs assessment, the pilot study and the analysis of the nurse respondents. The End User Survey tool based on the EHR provides questionnaire type of review where the clinical staff answer the asked questions focusing on the current state assessment and usability within the hospital. The remote documentation applicable to the new unified ambulatory system makes it easier and efficient since it increases the number of patients handled at the same time. The tool when applied to measure the comparison will provide information based on the questions developed by the clinical team and given to selected stakeholders who give independent information on the success or failure realized (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, n.d.). Additionally, the tool looks impressive due to several reasons ranging from the clarity of questions to simplicity of the questions. Such a structured questionnaire permit respondents time to evaluate their responses carefully without interference from the researcher. Moreover, the tool has allowed for both subjective and objective questions. The questionnaire is framed in with questions in such a way that it can gather quantitative data which could have been difficult to collect otherwise. Also, most of the questions are directly related to my PICO question which guides the research.

The structured questionnaire will be helpful in the evaluation project since my PICO question involves measurement of different constructs of the respondents’ feelings, suggestions, opinions, and other related aspects. Most of these constructs are perceived to be unobservable individual characteristics that cause variation in behavior. The items in the questionnaire will be phrased in such a way that they pose one evaluation characteristic per item so that the respondents will take minimal time while responding to the questions. The aim is to ascribe quantitative value to qualitative data so that the items can be amenable to statistical analysis. More so, the end user survey tool promotes the use of advance technology (electronic health records) hence becoming useful for the evaluation as it saves time and related resources for the hospital (Timmins, 2013).

More so, the survey becomes the standard method relating to the collection of data. The survey tool is flexible, comfortable during implementation, and offering unlimited data range hence providing reliable results for the new mode of documentation within the hospital. Another reason for selecting the tool is because it measures the change-over-time effects of the clinical documentation. It helps in monitoring pre-system conditions against the post-system conditions hence gathering extensive feedback (Penfold et al., 2011).

The outcome goals formulated in the earlier stages of the project will form the basis for determining the success of the evaluation tool. The deliverables for the project are the evaluation goals. Thus, they should match the goals of the end-users which should in term match those of the EHR implementation in acute and ambulatory care (Seto, Foisy, Arkison, Klassen & Williams, 2012). Additionally, the evaluation will be based on clinical outcome measures, clinical processes, patient care quality, provider adoption of EHR, formulate evaluation and attitude measures tool (Friedman & Wyatt, 2010). These items will be factored in the matrix to facilitate the success of the evaluation.

The plan regarding the evaluation tool will be in the form of a questionnaire outlining the questions relating to the PICO question. The plan aims at providing feedback by the end users (clinic staff) utilizing the new system that is particularly for documentation within the hospital. The method is precise and the responses obtained will help the management measure the effectiveness of the new system as compared to the previous one. The results achieved from the end user survey questionnaires are analyzed, and positive outcomes should show that the implemented system has improved quality of health care via documentation within the hospital. The issues addressed by the structured questionnaire include a discussion about challenges and implementers of the evaluation. Study design questions will be used to obtain data to support quantitative evaluation. This questionnaire has an advantage since it does not allow for simple answers such as yes or no. The tool will be helpful in the evaluation methodology since it will provide data with some degree of opinion. Thus, this will permit the researcher to obtain quantitative data that can be analyzed with relative ease. Also, the evaluation questionnaires will offer anonymity on self-administered questionnaires to reduce pressure and social desirability bias (Kaphingst et al., 2012).

In conclusion, an evaluation tool forms part of the important basis for a flawless research. The tool selected should be tested for reliability and validity. In this evaluation project, the questionnaire will be helpful in obtaining credible data for quantitative analysis. As noted earlier, the identified tool utilizes a questionnaire with structured questions meant to measure respondents’ latent constructs. Additionally, during the evaluation process, the questionnaires should be designed in a manner that the questions eliminate possible bias.

References

Las Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (n.d.). 2009 International Survey of Primary Care Doctors. Retrieved from: https://healthit.ahrq.gov/health-it-tools-and-resources/health-it-survey-compendium/2009-international-survey-primary-care.

Friedman, C. P., & Wyatt, J. (2010). Evaluation methods in biomedical informatics. (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.

Kaphingst, K. A., Kreuter, M. W., Casey, C., Leme, L., Thompson, T., Cheng, M. R., et al. (2012). Health literacy INDEX: Development, reliability, and validity of a new tool for evaluating the health literacy demands of health information materials. Journal of Health Communication, 17(Supp 3), 203–221. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2012.712612

Penfold, R. B., Kullgren, J. T., Miroshnik, I., Galbraith, A. A., Hinrichsen, V. L., & Lieu, T. A. (2011). Reliability of a patient survey assessing cost-related changes in health care use among high deductible health plan enrollees. BMC Health Services Research, 11(1), 133–143. DOI: 10.1186/1472-6963-11-133

Seto, I., Foisy, M., Arkison, B., Klassen, T., & Williams, K. (2012). The evaluation of an evidence-based clinical answer format for pediatricians. BMC Pediatrics, 12, 34–41. DOI: 10.1186/1471-2431-12-34

Timmins, F. (2013). Nursing Research Generating and Assessing Evidence for Nursing Practice. Nurse Education in Practice, 13(6), e29. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2013.04.001.