There have been steady efforts to improve quality in healthcare since the early 2000s, kickstarted by two reports released by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) [1]. The first report asserts that healthcare is not as safe as it should be and offers a substantial body of evidence pointing to medical errors as a leading cause of death and injury in the United States (U.S.). The second report focuses more broadly on how the healthcare delivery system can be redesigned to innovate and improve care [2]. Both reports suggest making effective use of information technologies as one of six necessary strategies for the redesign of healthcare systems [2, 3] and express concern over slow uptake of information technology in healthcare. Healthcare is an information-based science [4] and providers must have access to timely and accurate information to provide safe high-quality care [5]. Clearly, information management and health information technology (HIT) are fundamental to current and future healthcare delivery in the U.S., [6, 7] United Kingdom (U.K.), [8] and elsewhere [9–15].

Modern healthcare makes wide use of information technology [16, 17]. Most stakeholders agree that information technology such as electronic health records (EHRs) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) will be critical to transforming the healthcare industry [6]. According to the IOM, HIT must play a central role in the redesign of the healthcare system if a substantial improvement in quality is to be achieved over the coming decade. Given the complexity of modern medicine, it is inevitable that HIT will play an ever increasing role in improving healthcare quality [18]. The imperatives of improving documentation, reducing error, and empowering patients will continue to use of information technology in healthcare. There is plenty of evidence that clinical informatics applications can address these imperatives to enhance patient outcomes, reduced costs, and provide access to knowledge [19].

Otherwise, healthcare costs are rising and all parties involved-government, insurers, hospitals and patients-are concerned. Costs must be reduced, but without major compromise of quality [20, 21]. The widespread adoption of HIT may reduce costs by way of improved efficiency and less duplication of effort in delivery of care services as well as a reduction in costly medical errors [22, 23]. Payment systems and provisions from payers have further incentivized the use of information systems in healthcare [24]. For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) provide up to $27B of incentive payments over 10 years to hospitals and healthcare providers that demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record (EHR) systems in the U.S. [25, 26]. Simply put, “meaningful use” requires providers to demonstrate use of HIT to measure improvements in quality of care [27]. Similarly, England has invested at least £12.8 billion in a National Programme for Information Technology for the National Health Service in 2009 [15, 28].

Hospitals in particular are characterized by the high capacity of information and clinical data produced, and a new category of HIS now dominates in modern hospitals [16]. These systems aim to support high-quality, efficient, patient-centered care [29] with integrated support for the administrative and management tasks needed to support such care [30]. HIS systems have been shown to decrease the cost of quality care and the accessibility time to patient records [24]. The relevance of ‘good’ HIS for high-quality of care is obvious [29, 30]. Further advances of technology in healthcare include the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to support robust communications in an increasingly complex healthcare environment. ICT originally contributed to timely and efficient transmission of patient data, and its focus is now shifting to improve clinical data quality by using online clinical data acquisition and processing [31].

Implementation of HIS¹ systems has increased globally over the past 5 years, and higher-income countries are further in adoption and utilization of HIS systems compared to lower-income countries [32]. There are many competing HIS vendors each with their own products and different capabilities [33]. Most hospitals in higher-income countries are using comprehensive HIS, [12, 34–36] while in other parts of the world hospital orders for medications, laboratory tests, and other services are still paper-based [37]. This situation leads to a natural question: which core functions of HIS should be adopted for maximum impact on quality and patient safety?

This question was partially addressed in a 2003 IOM report which identified eight categories of core functionalities: health information and data; results management; computerized physician order entry; decision support system; electronic communication and connectivity; patient support; administrative processes; and reporting and population health management [38].

There is general consensus that the use of HIT should lead to more efficient, safer, and higher quality care [19, 39, 40]. There are few studies and data available on HIS implementation in countries with less mature healthcare systems. We hope to close this gap and provide new data on HIT implementation in Turkey.

Therefore the aim of this study is to determine availability of core HIS functions implemented in Turkish hospitals and their perceived importance on quality and patient safety.

We investigated availability of HIS functions and their perceived importance on quality and patient safety by 50 items survey developed by authors, and received responses from hospital quality professionals from a broadly representative sample of Turkish hospitals in terms of geographic and institutional characteristics. Despite high levels of perceived importance across all 50 HIS functions which comprised our survey, on average only two-thirds of hospitals surveyed have adopted these functions and important functions like decision support systems are adopted at very low rates.

We focused on subgroups of HIS functions that are of special interest. First we considered the more highly available functions. Generally the most widely available functions are those related to data security, automation of laboratory processes, and administrative reporting. Reasons for this high adoption may include the importance of privacy and data security in the healthcare setting [52, 53]; pressure on laboratories to satisfy ongoing quality audits and maintain licensing or certification; or recommendations from MoH [54–56]. It is also worth noting that administrative functions are often highly valued by hospital leaders who are in a position to influence HIS purchasing decisions [6, 45, 57].

We examined more closely the relationship between availability and perceived importance of each item. We observed as expected that availability and perceived importance are generally correlated (Fig. 1). However there were some functions that departed from the general pattern. For example, we identified three ‘clusters’ of items which were generally not as available as their perceived importance would suggest: staff safety, medication safety, and monitoring indicators. While focus has recently shifted to patient-centered care, it is also increasingly recognized that high quality care includes employee safety as well as patient safety. This change of emphasis is meant to ensure that a safety culture pervades a healthcare organization, with the safety of the workforce and the work environment given equal standing as a safety priority [58]. Medication errors compose a sizable proportion of the total burden of medical errors, and information systems are an effective tool to prevent these errors [2, 3, 59, 60]. Monitoring indicators in real-time using HIS offers many advantages [61, 62]. This reflects discordance between hospital QDs and the hospital leaders who make decisions about HIS purchasing.

Functions associated with patient access to services, patient comfort, patient rights, and hospital operations were evaluated as relatively less important than their availability. Indeed, QDs are expected to be more sensitive to patient satisfaction and patient experience. However our findings suggest that the administrator responsible for HIS selection might prioritize administrative needs and patient expectations driven by previously determined health policies [63] that might lead to diminished perceived importance among healthcare staff include quality directors.

Availability and perceived importance were concordant and generally high for features related to information security, patient safety, and laboratory services. Information security is a top priority for every institution and especially for hospitals, although there are no privacy laws in Turkey specific to healthcare such as the Health Information Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA). Moreover, patient safety and laboratory services standards were component of national quality standards from the first iteration, and hospitals have been surveyed against these standards several times [54, 64]. These findings are consistent with a positive effect from the quality survey process explained above.

Telemedicine applications and patient education functions had generally low availability and perceived importance. Although telemedicine has significant advantages for patients located in remote geographic regions far from qualified healthcare facilities [65–68], our finding is not surprising since many hospitals without remotely located patients may consider telemedicine a luxury. Patient empowerment via education is understood to be an important part of the healing process [69, 70]. We believe our findings have identified an important issue for further discussion among healthcare administrators and employees.

The IOM category reported most available was RM, with these functions present on average across 90% of respondent hospitals. Managing results electronically has substantial impact on unnecessarily ordered tests, and timeliness of reporting to providers. It is also significant to prevent medical errors [71–73]. The high level of RM function adoption among Turkish hospitals may accelerate future plans for electronic medical records shared throughout all Turkish healthcare providers, leading to eventual improvements in clinical care by increasing provider access to timely and accurate clinical data. Conversely, DSS is reported as the functional category least available in Turkish hospitals. DSS includes applications that combine clinical information with embedded medical knowledge to assist the human decision process [4]. These systems imply some higher level of information processing, or inference, by the computer [74]. Some respondents reported that both providers and hospital managers lacked the necessary knowledge for effective use of information systems (See Table 5). Thus general issues of staff training and expertise of management may explain lower availability of DSS in Turkish hospitals, as well as clinicians’ willingness to ask, direct, and help vendors and hospital managers with the development and adoption of DSS. The literature supports the potential of DSS to improve patient safety and quality of care e.g. reminders for vital tasks, assistance with diagnoses, avoiding drug-drug interactions, enhancing clinical regulatory compliance, reducing unnecessary test orders, and identifying emerging disease outbreaks [6, 74–76]. Involving clinicians in DSS development, and increased awareness and investment in DSS will likely improve safety and quality across the Turkish hospital system.

Perceived importance was generally high across all items, and there were no substantial differences in across IOM categories. CPOE functions were perceived as most important and PS functions (e.g. patient portal) were generally perceived as less important. Similar research studying 89 U.S. healthcare facilities in 2005 rated categories 7.58 to 8.83 (out of 10) on importance, similar to our results. PS shows low in the U.S. as well as Turkey [40]. The same study showed 37% of respondents report current use of at least one component in all of the eight core HIS functionalities, while another study suggests that in 2009, only 1.5% of U.S. hospitals had comprehensive HIS i.e. present in all clinical units, and only an additional 7.6% have a basic system i.e. present in at least one clinical unit. Results from the U.S., Spain, and South Korea also show highest availability for RM functionality e.g. RM was available for 75% of U.S. hospitals [14, 15, 39]. There are broad parallels between the U.S. situation circa 2010 and the adoption of HIS in Turkey roughly 5 years later.

This study has several limitations. Although we examined reliability of individual items, we did not validate our survey using an independent sample nor did we validate against an existing instrument. We designed and piloted our survey with an aim of face validity, and our focus was on broad patterns of response rather than the psychometric properties of the survey instrument. The survey instrument does not include all HIS functions but rather 50 items to be most relevant to patient safety and quality as determined by researcher judgment and pilot testing. Although observed scores for perceived importance lie within a compressed range of values – mean responses across items range from 7.13 to 8.44 – our large sample allows for valid statistical comparison and correlation. Military hospitals were not included in the sample. Finally, promotion of the survey via the MoH e-mail and website may have induced a ‘halo effect’ of positive response bias.

Diverse HIS functions have been adopted at different rates in Turkey and across the world. This study, which supports previous research conducted in the U.S., presents potentially useful insight into the adoption of HIS functions to support patient safety and quality. Findings from this and similar surveys should be considered carefully by policymakers, software designers, clinicians, and hospital leaders. We recommend mandating certified software (or offering incentives) and surveying HIS functions during regular quality audits, two policy approaches which would support system-wide improvements. Another important issue that we identified is the training of hospital leaders and clinical staff. Technical support and training processes may be better defined by public regional authorities. Software designers may consider our results when developing HIS products and hospital leaders should make HIS purchasing decisions using information from QDs on which functions are perceived most important to patient safety and quality of care.

Our study corroborates previous work highlighting the perceived importance of HIT on quality and patient safety. After revision and tailoring to the specifics of other international settings, the expanded list of items in this study could be used elsewhere to increase awareness and to survey availability of HIS functions in other national healthcare systems. We believe that our survey is an important first step to understand the system-wide availability of specific HIS functions across hospitals in Turkey, and that similar surveys in other countries would yield valuable knowledge to guide policymakers and hospital leaders in many settings.

Our findings support the conclusion that HIS functions in Turkish hospitals are generally not as available as quality managers would like. Policymakers, hospital leaders, and software developers all have a potential role to address future improvements. Some policy levers include financial incentives to adopt specific HIS functions; government involvement in certification of software; regulations to encourage or enforce usage of certified HIS; and inclusion of desired functions into accreditation manuals. Each of these policies may help integrate HIS functions to support quality and patient safety in Turkish hospitals. Finally, further investment in training programs will be needed across organizational levels, including clinical employees, HIT support staff, and hospital leaders and managers.