Predicting the learning and consultation time in a computerized primary healthcare clinic.

Managers would like to know how long it takes healthcare service providers to achieve the same throughput of patients per day that they were used to with a pen-and-paper system. This study has been undertaken to derive a model for predicting the time it takes a service provider from a previously disadvantaged community to enter a patient's record in terms of his or her experience and the number of data units that have to be captured. A model was also derived to predict the average consultation time in terms of the number of data units that are captured by an experienced service provider. It can be inferred that healthcare service providers should be allowed at least 6 months of computerized system experience before any decisions about the success of the technology introduction can be made.