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Important barriers for widespread use of health information exchange (HIE) are usability and interface issues. However, most HIEs are implemented without performing a needs assessment with the end users, healthcare providers. We performed a user needs assessment for the process of obtaining clinical information from other health care organizations about a hospitalized patient and identified the types of information most valued for medical decision-making.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis were used to evaluate the process to obtain and use outside clinical information (OI) using semi-structured interviews (16 internists), direct observation (750 h), and operational data from the electronic medical records (30,461 hospitalizations) of an internal medicine department in a public, teaching hospital in Tampa, Florida …