Evaluating the Effectiveness of Health Information Management Systems in Facilitating Quality Healthcare Service: A Cross‐Sectional Study

Background and Aims HIMS was purposefully implemented to generate high‐quality data to help manage and track patients' health status and support healthcare decisions such as clinical care and resource allocation. In this vein, the study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of HIMS in facilitating quality healthcare service by assessing professionals' perception of HIMS, its impact on healthcare quality and feedback on HIMS satisfaction and areas for improvement. Methods The study employed a cross‐sectional design to collect data from 480 healthcare professionals from the Directorate of University Health Services‐University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast Teaching Hospital and Ewim Polyclinic via semi‐structured questionnaires. A thorough quantitative data analysis approach was employed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 2.6. The results presented the descriptive and influential statistics (Chi‐square test of independence), with p ‐value < 0.05 deemed significant. Results Healthcare professionals are acquainted with HIMS and its usage in their facilities. About 85% of the participants rated the system's user‐friendliness as good and excellent. Perception of the essentiality of HIMS interoperability is associated with occupation type (χ 2 = 37.517, p = 0.001). It was discovered that HIMS has improved patients' data accuracy and completeness (M = 4.2), facilitated better care and coordination among care providers (M = 3.39), and positively impacted clinical decisions and treatment plans (M = 2.28). Human factors such as age group, occupation and years of experience significantly shape perception of HIMS effectiveness in enhancing speed and efficiency of accessing patient information during clinical encounters, with p‐values of 0.029, 0.004 & 0.019, respectively. Aside from these, there are constant power outages, network issues and poor backup that need to be addressed. Conclusion The overall sentiment towards HIMS is favorable, indicating a successful adoption and integration into daily operations. HIMS has proven to be the necessary technology needed to fill gaps in care delivery and transform healthcare service.