Readiness of Shiraz teaching hospitals to implement Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

Due to the importance of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) in the quality of health care services, checking the readiness of hospitals to implement it is a vital step to define success or failure of the Electronic Medical Record in the first place. The aim of this study was to evaluate the readiness of Shiraz teaching hospitals to implement Electronic Medical Record.
This study was a cross-sectional descriptive study done in 2015. The study population included Health Information Management (HIM) staff of Shiraz teaching hospitals. Five hospitals from a total of 14 hospitals were selected as Single-stage cluster sampling with a population of 79 health information management staff. Data collection was performed by using a validated questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of three main dimensions including technical, organizational and legal requirements. For data analysis, SPSS software version 16 and one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for comparisons between five hospitals were used.
The results showed that Shiraz teaching hospitals have high readiness (3.66 out of 5) to implement Electronic Medical Record. Shiraz teaching hospitals are better prepared in terms of legal requirements. Also, a significant difference was not observed among the hospitals in any of the technical, organizational and legal aspects (P > 0.05).
Due to the importance of the technical, organizational and legal aspects in the implementation of Electronic Medical Record, it is recommended that the authorities consider these aspects in implementation of Electronic Medical Record. Also, according to the high readiness of Shiraz teaching hospitals to implement Electronic Medical Record, it is recommended that authorities should take necessary measures, including financial support in order to run it.