Differing faculty and housestaff acceptance of an electronic health record.

In order to determine whether differences exist between housestaff and faculty physician acceptance of an electronic health record system, we conducted a written survey of attitudes towards new electronic medical record at the University of Illinois at Chicago. We surveyed 330 faculty and housestaff physicians. User acceptance of the EHR was high for both faculty physicians and housestaff. An amount of 88.0% of the housestaff and 64.7% of the faculty preferred the EHR over a paper record. Although both housestaff and faculty acceptance of an EHR was high, housestaff showed greater approval ratings than faculty. Central to acceptance of an EHR is conservation of physician time, including improving system speed, reducing time spent waiting for a computer to become available, and minimizing time spent documenting care.