Table 2.

Primary Care Physician Assessment of Discharge Summaries

	EDS ( = 46)	Dictation ( = 48)
	Mean (SD)	Mean (SD)	Difference of means (95% CI)	-value for difference of means
Quality	86.4 (15.0)	84.3 (17.6)	2.1 (−4.6 to 8.8)	0.53
Completeness	88.2 (12.4)	83.5 (19.1)	4.7 (−2.0 to 11.4)	0.16
Organization	88.3 (9.8)	85.5 (17.6)	2.8 (−3.0 to 8.6)	0.34
Timeliness	88.4 (15.8)	82.9 (21.2)	5.6 (−2.3 to 13.4)	0.16

electronic discharge summary

Quality defined as “efficiently communicates information necessary for continued patient care.”

Completeness defined as “all necessary information is included.”

Organization defined as “information is presented in a logical and clear fashion.”

Timeliness defined as “time from patient discharge to summary receipt.”

Note: Analysis of medians indicated skewness of data. A non-parametric Mann-Whitney test was done, which also showed no statistically significant difference between the 2 groups, for any of the above measures (-values 0.13 to 0.99)