The effect of point of care technology on the quality of patient care.

It is thought that new technologies like computers at the patient's bedside, or point of care technology (PCT) improve nursing productivity, documentation, patient satisfaction and decrease costs. Using the Health Care Technology Assessment (HCTA) framework, (safety, cost, effectiveness, social impact), a descriptive and quasi-experimental study was performed to test the effectiveness and explain the social impact of PCT. A sample of 90 patients from five nursing units in three hospitals were obtained for the study. Half of the patients had computers at their bedside. Data were collected on a hospital pretest/posttest unit and two comparison and experimental units. The main null hypothesis was: There is no difference in the quality of patient care on nursing units with and without PCT. Quality of patient care was measured by patient satisfaction and a nursing care documentation instruments. This hypothesis was rejected. While patients were generally very satisfied with their nursing care on all units, when controlling for time and the presence of the computer, patients who did not have PCT were more satisfied than patients in rooms with PCT. Furthermore, the charts of patients with PCT were less compliant to documentation standards. Conversely, a sub sample of these same patients expressed positive responses to the bedside computer and technologies in their room and this concurred with the current literature. The benefits of the technology were found to outweigh the costs of PCT from the literature review. There was not enough in the literature to draw conclusions about the safety of PCT. In summary, the quality of patient care did not improve with the implementation of PCT in this study.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)