QI scores of hospital groups according to the number of positive responses to questionnaire items on hospital policies, IT infrastructure and hospital size (153 hospitals)
| No of questionnaire items with positive responses | Mean QI score | n |
| Hospital policies * | ||
| 0 | 78.73 | 4 |
| 1 | 81.92 | 51 |
| 2 | 84.95 | 29 |
| 3 | 78.92 | 69 |
| IT infrastructure | ||
| Accessibility to the internet and other information sources† | ||
| 0 | 78.59 | 5 |
| 1 | 82.20 | 32 |
| 2 | 78.70 | 62 |
| 3 | 83.32 | 54 |
| Access to paid medical evidence databases‡ | ||
| 0 | 72.55 | 25 |
| 1 | 79.76 | 54 |
| 2 | 84.88 | 74 |
| Medical library and intranet usability within the hospital§ | ||
| 0 | 81.70 | 21 |
| 1 | 78.45 | 45 |
| 2 | 80.25 | 39 |
| 3 | 84.40 | 26 |
| 4–6 | 83.27 | 22 |
| Hospital size and teaching status | ||
| >500 bed non-teaching | 87.64 | 4 |
| >500 bed teaching | 83.28 | 21 |
| ≤500 bed teaching | 83.16 | 94 |
| ≤500 bed non-teaching | 73.10 | 34 |
Questionnaire items are as follows.
*Three items: having explicit policy to enhance IT infrastructure, explicit recommendation for the utilisation of evidence-based medicine, and explicit recommendation to use clinical practice guidelines.
†Three items: electronic health records and internet availability, wireless LAN availability, wired LAN availability at outpatient clinics/wards.
‡Two items: provision of access to the Japanese medical database and access to English-language medical databases.
§Six items: provision of access to an intranet homepage, one or more full-time medical librarians, periodic meetings for library improvement, continuously working to improve library services and usability, communication with other hospital librarians and others.
IT, information technology; LAN, local area network; QI, quality indicator.