Date of Award

2018

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration

Department

Monte Ahuja College of Business

First Advisor

Henry, Raymond

Subject Headings

Health Care

Abstract

Since the passage of the HITECH Act, adoption of electronic health records (EHR) has increased significantly EHR refers to an electronic version of a patient’s medical history. The adoption of EHR has potential to reduce medical errors, duplication of testing, and delays in treatment. However, current literature indicates that implementation of EHR is not resulting in the automatic routinization of EHR. Routinization refers to the notion that truly successful technological innovations are no longer perceived as being new or out-of-the-ordinary. The complexity of EHRs allow individual users to use these systems at different levels of sophistication. Research shows that healthcare professionals are using non-standard ways to use or circumvent the EHR to complete their work and are limited in EHR systems use. Further, although workarounds may seem necessary to physicians and are not perceived to be problematic, they can pose a threat to patient safety and hinder the potential benefits. Hence, we argue the EHR implementations are limited in their potential due to the lack of routinization. Any new technological innovation requires the physician support and willingness to learn about the system to move to the routinization phase of implementation. Hence, we draw from the literature on organization learning, individual learning, and routines to understand factors that influence EHR routinization.

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