Health information technology capacity at federally qualified health centers: a mechanism for improving quality of care

Table 3 Factors associated with higher HIT capacity at the FQHCs (n=776)

		HIT capacity
		OR	LCL	UCL	p-value
Receipt of discharge summaries	Usual/Often	1.46	1.26	1.70	<0.0001
	Some/Rarely/Never [ref]
Patient Reminders	Usual/Often	1.65	1.41	1.93	<0.0001
	Some/Rarely/Never [ref]
Getting timely appointment -specialty care	Easy/somewhat difficult	1.33	1.14	1.56	0.0004
	Very Difficult [ref]
Incentive for patient satisfaction	Yes	1.47	1.22	1.76	<0.0001
	No [ref]
HRSA Disparity Coordination	Yes	1.14	0.88	1.48	0.3093
	No
Overall Measure of QI Support	Yes	1.46	1.26	1.69	<0.0001
	Some or none [ref]
Physician vacancies	Yes	0.79	0.67	0.95	0.0099
	No [ref]
Nurse vacancies	Yes	0.76	0.62	0.92	0.0058
	No [ref]
Hospital Affiliation	All	1.20	1.04	1.39	0.0147
	Some or none [ref]
Usual Source of Care	Usual/Often	1.75	1.36	2.25	<0.0001
	Some/Rarely/None [ref]
Percent Medicaid		1.82	1.11	2.97	0.0171
Percent minority	High (50% or more)	1.24	0.99	1.55	0.0624
	Medium (5–49%)	1.42	1.12	1.80	0.0044
	Low (<5%) [ref]
Size	Large	1.17	0.94	1.46	0.1565
	Medium	0.88	0.75	1.04	0.1258
	Small [ref]
Region	Midwest	0.51	0.40	0.64	<0.0001
	South	0.78	0.63	0.96	0.0169
	West	0.60	0.49	0.75	<0.0001
	Northeast [ref]
Urbanicity	Urban	1.28	1.08	1.51	0.0043
	Rural [ref]

Source: The 2009 National Survey of Federally Qualified Health Centers.
HIT-Health Information Technology.
HIT based on health centers’ possession of 16 functionalities of technologies.
OR-Odds Ratio; CI- Confidence Interval; ref- Reference category.
Odds ratios reported are for having higher odds of increased HIT capacity in relation to the reference category.
p-value is for the association between HIT capacity and outcome measures of interest.

ISSN: 1472-6963