Registry: Usability Assessment
A usability assessment was conducted from March - April of 2007 to better understand the observed low adoption the CCCN Diabetes Registry among healthcare providers who had agreed to participate in the CCCN program. These usability data were obtained through a questionnaire and from in-office interviews. The study specifically obtained user opinions’ of the system (e.g., satisfaction, suggestions for improvement) and observations during in-office interviews to uncover how these provider offices actually work with the CCCN point-of-care tools in their environment (e.g., look at current procedure for online input and forms).
Two difference sets of survey questions were developed to assess the usability factors involved in the observed low adoption rate. There were at least two primary users of the CCCN Diabetes Registry system all of whom were involved in supporting the patient care visit as well as entering and tracking patient data in the registry database. Most providers performing the patient examination used the paper point-of-care tool during the patient visit encounter, while provider staff tended to retrieve the patient files and enter the visit information into the registry. Therefore, the first survey addressed usage of the online/electronic point-of-care tool, and the second survey addressed the paper point-of-care tool. Theoretically these two tools could be used by a single provider, but in practice usage patterns suggested that these two tools were used by different CCCN users.
The results of this assessment revealed several interesting usability issues related to low adoption:
- Most participating providers were more motivated with compensated for their time in doing what they considered extra work because it was out of their current workflow processes.
- Most providers had different workflow practices in handling diabetes patients that it’s not surprising that they would hesitate to embrace yet another workflow system.
- Many providers said they felt that using the CCCN point-of-care tool improved patient willingness to collaborate with physicians in their healthcare to mitigate conditions related to diabetes.
- There was a lack of data integrity, where the need for data reliability would need to be higher than the CCCN Diabetes Registry provided. In this type of application, there needs to be 100 percent reliability.
(see May 2007 Clinical Committee Meeting Presentation to view more detail)