Benefits of hospital information systems as seen by front-line nurses and general hospital staff.

A series of descriptive correlation studies involving 6 hospitals and 697 respondents identified the benefits of computerized hospital information systems (HIS) and the value of those benefits as perceived by front-line system users. Benefits related to quality of care were realized to a greater extent, and considered more important, than those related to cost/savings/productivity or professionalism/recruitment/retention. Perceptions of nurses were not significantly different from those of general hospital staff members. Scattered significant correlations were revealed between demographic and organization variables and perceptions of benefits.