The Use of Electronic Health Records in Kingdom of Bahrain Hospitals: A National Survey

Abstract

Objective: Our study investigated the level of implementation and utilization of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems in all governmental and private hospitals that are registered in in the Kingdom of Bahrain under the Health Care Facilities section in the National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA).

Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted through a quantitative self-report survey. The data was collected from the IT division heads in the concerned hospitals from the 23^rd June 2020 to the 27^th  July 2020. The first part consisted of demographic information of the hospitals and the second part requested the utilization level of items on the EHR comprehensive and basic functions (24 core functions). Only governmental and private hospitals licensed by NHRA in the Kingdom were included in the study.

Results: Nearly 82% of all hospitals agreed to participate, where 89% of responding hospitals owned an EHR system and 55.6% had implemented comprehensive or basic electronic functionality features. Looking at the core functionality implementation in their EHR systems, the decision support had the lowest score with almost 42%.

Conclusions: This is the first nationwide survey to be conducted on hospitals in Bahrain, showing that 89% of hospitals adopted an EHR system and 55.6% implemented a comprehensive or basic electronic system. Among the 24 electronic characteristics in EHR systems, hospitals must focus to improve the decision support functionality application status. The results may contribute to the improvement of the EHR system implementation in Bahrain and in the region.