A Study of Hospital Information System and Doctors' Responses in General Hospitals

This article is investigating the general status of hospital computerization and doctors' reactions to these changes in four general hospitals. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from two university-affiliated hospitals and two private general hospitals in Seoul. The questionnaire survey was conducted in 1996, and the data contain 81 doctors from four hospitals. We also collected in-depth-interview data from 8 doctors in these hospitals. We revewed the general status of information system and utilization level in general hospitals and analyzed doctors' response to these changes focusing on four areas of medical care ; 1) jobs and functions of the doctors in patient care; 2) doctors' autonomy and their status ; 3) doctors' relations with other personnel; and 4) the quality of medical care. The results are :

1) The general status of information system in general hospitals are limited to the comput-erization of the administrative part, and thus very few hospitals employ information system directly to the patient care.

2) In terms of doctors' job and functions, the computerization of the administrative part of hospital works increased the efficiency of doctors' patient care in charting, keeping and sear-ching data, but put more burden on them for doing double jobs of hand-writing and comput-erization.

3) The autonomy of doctors and their status have not been noticeably changed in the process so far, but there appears a possibility that doctors could defend themselves to the manager's control over them through information system.

4) The computerization of the hospital works tends to reduce an unnecessary face-to-face interaction, which is expected to facilitate communications in the hospital. There are also some changes in the relationship between doctors and semi-professional personnels such ans, nurse and medical technicians.

5) Doctors pointed out that a few positive effects of the computerization on the quality of medical care on patients' side have emerged and thus expected improvement in the quality of medical care in the future.