Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
C.T. Lamont Primary Health Care Research Centre, Bruyère Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
BMJ Open. 2023 Feb 10;13(2):e064745. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-064745.
The number of Canadians 75 years and older is expected to double over the next 20 years, putting continuing care systems such as long-term care (LTC) homes under increasing pressure. Health information technology (IT) has been found to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care in numerous clinical settings and could help optimise LTC for residents. However, the level of health IT adoption in Ontario's LTC homes is unknown and, as a result, requires an accurate assessment to provide a baseline understanding for future planning.
We will use a cross-sectional design to investigate the level of IT maturity in Ontario's LTC homes. IT maturity will be assessed with the LTC IT Maturity Instrument, a validated survey examining IT capabilities, the extent of IT use and degree of internal/external IT integration across the domains of resident care, clinical support and administrative activities. All LTC homes in Ontario will be invited to participate. The Director of Care for each home will be directly contacted for recruitment. The survey will be distributed online (or by paper, if preferred) to LTC homes and completed by a staff member designated by the LTC to be knowledgeable about its IT systems. Analyses will consist of descriptive statistics characterising IT maturity across LTC homes and inferential statistics to examine the association between key facility-level characteristics (size, ownership, rurality) and IT maturity.
This study was reviewed by the Ottawa Health Science Network Research Ethics Board and was exempt from full ethics review. Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publication and presentations to the scientific community and stakeholders. Dissemination of our findings will not only inform provincial planning for harnessing the potential of technology in LTC but may also enable quality improvement initiatives in individual LTC homes.
在未来 20 年内，加拿大 75 岁及以上的人口数量预计将翻一番，这使得长期护理（LTC）院等持续护理系统面临越来越大的压力。健康信息技术（IT）已被证明可以提高众多临床环境中的护理质量、安全性和效率，并有助于优化居民的长期护理。然而，安大略省 LTC 院的健康 IT 采用水平尚不清楚，因此需要进行准确评估，为未来规划提供基线了解。
我们将采用横断面设计来调查安大略省 LTC 院的 IT 成熟度水平。IT 成熟度将通过 LTC IT 成熟度工具进行评估，该工具是一种经过验证的调查，用于检查 IT 能力、IT 使用程度以及在居民护理、临床支持和行政活动等领域的内部/外部 IT 集成程度。安大略省的所有 LTC 院都将被邀请参与。每个家庭的护理主任将直接联系以进行招募。调查将以在线形式（或根据偏好以纸质形式）分发给 LTC 院，并由 LTC 指定的对其 IT 系统有一定了解的工作人员填写。分析将包括描述性统计，用于描述 LTC 院的 IT 成熟度，并进行推断性统计，以检验关键设施特征（规模、所有权、农村性）与 IT 成熟度之间的关联。
这项研究已由渥太华健康科学网络研究伦理委员会审查，并免除了全面伦理审查。研究结果将通过同行评审出版物和向科学界和利益相关者的演讲进行传播。我们研究结果的传播不仅将为安大略省利用技术潜力规划长期护理提供信息，还可能为个别 LTC 院的质量改进计划提供信息。
