Factors Affecting Physician's Attitudes Towards the Implementation of Electronic Health Records Using Structural Equation Modeling Modeling (SEM)

The most important barriers to the implementation of electronic health records (EHRs) are people’s attitudinal-behavioral limitations and organizational changes. Given its complexity, applicability of EHRs is very important, especially for physicians.
This study aimed to investigate the physicians’ attitudes towards the implementation of EHRs in a university-affiliated teaching hospital in Tehran, Iran.
This cross sectional study was conducted in a university-affiliated teaching hospital in Tehran, Iran in the second half of 2016. The attitudes of all physicians working in this hospital (n, 169) towards the implementation of EHRs were investigated, using census sampling method. The required data were collected using the translated and localized Morton’s standard questionnaire (2008). The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 21.0 and AMOS version 18.0. P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
The results showed that the studied conceptual model had a good fit and was structurally confirmed. Moreover, the results showed that independent variables could predict 51% of variations in the dependent variable of “physicians’ attitudes”. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) also showed that variables of “perceived usefulness” (r, 0.52) and “perceived ease of use” (r, 0.26) had major effects on the physicians’ positive attitudes (P The results showed that physicians working in the studied hospital agreed with the implementation of EHRs, and they had the required abilities and readiness to implement EHRs. According to these results, development of standards related to information security and privacy, as well as standards for conveying messages, especially for physicians and users who work directly with the system, is recommended.