Physician champions’ perspectives and practices on electronic health records implementation: challenges and strategies

Objective: Physician champions are “boots on the ground” physician leaders who facilitate the implementation of, and transition to, new health information technology (HIT) systems within an organization. They are commonly cited as key personnel in HIT implementations, yet little research has focused on their practices and perspectives. 

Methods: We addressed this research gap through a qualitative study of physician champions that aimed to capture their challenges and strategies during a large-scale HIT implementation. Email interviews were conducted with 45 physician champions from diverse clinical areas five months after a new electronic health record (EHR) system went live in a large academic medical center. We adopted a grounded theory approach to analyze the data.

Results: Our physician champion participants reported multiple challenges, including insufficient training, limited at-the-elbow support, unreliable communication with leadership and the EHR vendor, as well as flaw...