Impact of Online Clinical Data Exchange on Patient Time Saving in Healthcare Delivery

Despite advancement in information-technology infrastructure, many hospitals have yet to adopt the automation and continue to manually process patient health-care records, thereby contributing to health-related errors and delays in accessing patient health records for real-time decision making and improving patient care. Lack of capital is a major factor to health information system or electronic medical record adoption among hospitals. High cost of healthcare computerization and lack of skilled labor are some of the impediments to this adoption. The goal of this research is to examine how to overcome obstacles causing problems in the sharing and exchanging of clinical records among hospitals. Providing access to patients' online clinical records through their primary hospital portals can serve as the gateway for sharing and exchanging clinical information with other hospitals when patients are admitted to a hospital outside their primary care for treatment. This research examines two leading clinics, Clinic A and Clinic B, located in the city of Lynwood, CA and the city of Menifee, CA, respectively, and examines the use of IT in improving quality of healthcare delivery through exploration of the internet technology, specifically, if there is significant time saving for patients by using the hospital online portal to communicate with the providers to get their problems resolved.