Table 3.

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.