A study on the Satisfaction level of the Hospital staff and patients with the Existing Medical Record System at Pondicherry

Abstract

Patient care includes a chronological record of care and treatment, namely medical records. Medical Records Department (MRD) has become an essential department of every hospital (Chattoraj et. al 2005). The principle is “people forget, but records remember.†Medical Records Officers (MRO) and technicians have become specialists in their own right. The custodian of medical records is the hospital, but the information contained therein is the property of the patient. So when a patient asks for any information contained in the records, or the record itself, it becomes very difficult to search as most of the patient data are paper based. This study aims to find the satisfaction level of hospital staff and patients with the existing paper based medical record system and whether they prefer to go for transformation to electronic medical record system. The target respondents for the study are hospital staff and patients from 5 different hospitals in Puducherry. Simple random sampling was the technique used to select samples. 50 patients and 250 hospital staff were selected at random and separate questionnaires were distributed to them. From the data collected statistical analysis was done using simple charts and ANOVA. From the result of the analysis it was found that hospital staff and patients both had moderate level of satisfaction with the existing paper based medical record system. ANOVA showed no significant difference in the satisfaction level with the existing medical record system for both hospital staff and patients. Also the users i.e the hospital staff and patients were ready to accept the electronic medical record system if implemented