Experts speak: advice from key informants to small, rural hospitals on implementing the electronic health record system.

The US government has allocated $30 billion dollars to implement Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in hospitals and provider practices through a policy called Meaningful Use. Small, rural hospitals, particularly those designated as Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), comprising nearly a quarter of US hospitals, had not implemented EHRs before. Little is known on implementation in this setting. We interviewed a spectrum of 31 experts in the domain. The interviews were then analyzed qualitatively to ascertain the expert recommendations. Nineteen themes emerged. The pool of experts included staff from CAHs that had recently implemented EHRs. We were able to compare their answers with those of other experts and make recommendations for stakeholders. CAH peer experts focused less on issues such as physician buy-in, communication, and the EHR team. None of them indicated concern or focus on clinical decision support systems, leadership, or governance. They were especially concerned with system selection, technology, preparatory work and a need to know more about workflow and optimization. These differences were explained by the size and nature of these small hospitals.

How easy/difficult to find information about individual health insurance on the Internet: an examination of ten "quote" web sites.

Ten quote web sites were evaluated to examine the level of difficulty in finding information about individual health insurance. The degrees of ease/difficulty were measured in terms of the number of items to be filled out on the form in order to get a quote. Also examined were whether the quote web sites revealed their identity and whether they provided information about the health plans they quoted. The results showed that some quote web sites did not reveal information about themselves fully. The degrees of ease or difficulty varied from site to site. Not all quote web sites could provide quotes instantly. Among those that provided a quote, the amount of information given on the health plans also varied. Despite the difficulties, the internet has the potential to provide sufficient information.