PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Arwen Bunce
AU  - Mary Middendorf
AU  - Megan Hoopes
AU  - Jenna Donovan
AU  - Rachel Gold
TI  - Designing and Implementing an Electronic Health Record–Embedded Card Study in Primary Care: Methods and Considerations
AID  - 10.1370/afm.2818
DP  - 2022 Jul 01
TA  - The Annals of Family Medicine
PG  - 348--352
VI  - 20
IP  - 4
4099  - http://www.annfammed.org/content/20/4/348.short
4100  - http://www.annfammed.org/content/20/4/348.full
SO  - Ann Fam Med2022 Jul 01; 20
AB  - Card studies—short surveys about the circumstances within which patients receive care—are traditionally completed on physical cards. We report on the development of an electronic health record (EHR)–embedded card study intended to decrease logistical challenges inherent to paper-based approaches, including distributing, tracking, and transferring the physical cards, as well as data entry and respondent prompts, while simultaneously decreasing the complexity for participants and facilitating rich analyses by linking to clinical and demographic data found in the EHR. Developing the EHR-based programming and data extraction was time consuming, required specialized expertise, and necessitated iteration to rectify issues encountered during implementation. Nonetheless, future EHR-embedded card studies will be able to replicate many of the same processes as informed by these results. Once built, the EHR-embedded card study simplified survey implementation for both the research team and clinic staff, resulting in research-quality data, the ability to link survey responses to relevant EHR data, and a 79% response rate. This detailed accounting of the development and implementation process, including issues encountered and addressed, might guide others in conducting EHR-embedded card studies.