Abstract

Background: Adoptions of electronic medical records (EMRs) is restricted by many barriers, which may differ from one facility to another depending on the personal demographic data of such facility.
Objective: To assess the barriers of the physicians in Al-Hada Military Hospital in Taif City toward implementing EMR.
Materials and Methods: Questionnaire consisted of personal demographic variables, practical demographic variables, cost, data entry, and usefulness variables were distributed to 131 practicing physicians, who accepted to participate, were present at the time of the study (not on vacation or leave), and who were working in Al-Hada Military Hospital in Taif City (excluding visiting or locum physician). Result: Of the 129 physicians, 107 were men representing 83% whereas women represented only 17%. Most of the partic- ipants were from family and community medicine (25%), followed by surgery (20%), pediatrics (14%), medicine (12%), and OBG (8%). Twenty-five (19%) strongly agreed that EMR is too costly, 20 (15%) participants strongly agreed that EMR is time-consuming, and 39 (30%) strongly agreed the easiness of data entry into EMR. Conclusion: Generally, the barriers of Al-Hada Military Hospital physicians toward implementing computerization of medical record are mainly the cost and time.