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Forecasting Content and Stage in a Nursing Home Information Technology Maturity Instrument Using a Delphi Method

  • Systems-Level Quality Improvement
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A Correction to this article was published on 26 February 2020

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Abstract

Health information technology capabilities in some healthcare sectors, such as nursing homes, are not well understood because measures for information technology uptake have not been fully developed, tested, validated, or measured consistently. The paper provides a report of the development and testing of a new instrument measuring nursing home information technology maturity and stage of maturity. Methods incorporated a four round Delphi panel composed of 31 nursing home experts from across the nation who reported the highest levels of information technology sophistication in a separate national survey. Experts recommended 183 content items for 27 different content areas specifying the measure of information technology maturity. Additionally, experts ranked each of the 183 content items using an IT maturity instrument containing seven stages (stages 0–6) of information technology maturity. The majority of content items (40% (n = 74)) were associated with information technology maturity stage 4, corresponding to facilities with external connectivity capability. Over 11% of the content items were at the highest maturity stage (Stage 5 and 6). Content areas with content items at the highest stage of maturity are reflected in nursing homes that have technology available for residents or their representatives and used extensively in resident care. An instrument to assess nursing home IT maturity and stage of maturity has important implications for understanding health service delivery systems, regulatory efforts, patient safety and quality of care.

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Change history

  • 26 February 2020

    The original article unfortunately contained a mistake.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Keely Wise, Project Coordinator, who help keep us all organized, moving forward through this project, and on target to accomplish goals. Further, this study would not be possible without the contributions of many nursing home leaders across the country who were consistent partners in our research.

Funding

This project was supported by grant number R01HS022497 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. S415 Sinclair School of Nursing, University of Missouri Columbia, Columbia, MO, 65211-6000, USA

    Gregory L. Alexander

  2. Office of Medical Research, University of Missouri Columbia, Columbia, MO, 65211-6000, USA

    Chelsea Deroche

  3. Sinclair School of Nursing, University of Missouri Columbia, Columbia, MO, 65211-6000, USA

    Kimberly Powell & Lori Popejoy

  4. School of Medicine, University of Missouri Columbia, Columbia, MO, 65211-6000, USA

    Abu Saleh Mohammad Mosa

  5. Family and Community Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Richelle Koopman

Authors
  1. Gregory L. Alexander
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  2. Chelsea Deroche
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  3. Kimberly Powell
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  4. Abu Saleh Mohammad Mosa
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  5. Lori Popejoy
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  6. Richelle Koopman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gregory L. Alexander.

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Conflicts of Interest

Dr. Alexander is Founder and Owner of TechNHOlytics, LLC. A company that provides feedback to nursing homes about information technology.

Human Participants

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

All methods were approved by the universities Institutional Review Board (IRB) under IRB #2009109 HS.

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The original version of this article was revised: The name of the 4th author should be listed as “Abu Saleh Mohammed Mosa”.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Systems-Level Quality Improvement

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Alexander, G.L., Deroche, C., Powell, K. et al. Forecasting Content and Stage in a Nursing Home Information Technology Maturity Instrument Using a Delphi Method. J Med Syst 44, 60 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-020-1528-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-020-1528-6

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