Effectiveness of an information broker service.

The many disparate databases existing within the same health care organization create confusion and frustration for the consumer trying to get integrated information. The purpose of this research was to create a regional service that would provide a customer oriented information broker service with a single point of contact and guaranteed performance. From 1/98-6/99 there were 34 requests made. 23 were completed on time, eight still in progress and three were late (86.46% on time, average late time 0.76 days). 13 clinical departments used the service. Data was integrated from twelve different data sources. The requests produced about 2 Gigabytes of integrated data (416,666 single spaced pages). The resources required were approximately 1.3 FTE ($65K in direct costs). The cost/page of integrated information was 19 cents. The benefit to cost ratio was at least 3 and most likely higher. Surveys of customers indicated high satisfaction with services and would both utilize the service again and recommend it to others.