The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has weighed in with a step-by-step workbook helping providers get a handle on the actual cost and benefits an IT investment offers.

The guide walks IT project managers through the process of picking out project goals, including what aspects of the technology will need to be measured and how. It also offers proposed measures to evaluate, such as preventable adverse drug events and medication errors, as well as others impacting workflow and financial management. The idea is to make predictions ahead of time, then analyze those predictions later, learning from what assumptions were correct and which were not.

It also offers examples of specific technologies, such as computerized provider order entry and picture archiving and communication systems, with recommendations of how to evaluate each.

In addition to project-specific advice on how to evaluate the impact of IT projects, AHRQ also gives general research strategy hints, such as recommending that IT staffers do both statistical and open-ended (qualitative) research. For example, while statistical studies can measure vaccination rates and estimated changes post implementation of a reminder system, they may not reveal how clinicians actually feel about using the automated vaccination reminders, the authors note.

To learn get more of  the AHRQ's advice:
- read the report (.pdf)