PROS AND CONS OF CPOE

The Pros and Cons of CPOE and How to Successfully Implement at Hospital

Pros and Cons of CPOE

Introduction

Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) also known as Computerized Provider Order Entry is a process of electronic entry of data of the medical practitioners for the treatment of hospitalized patients under the care. This data is communicated over a wide network and is used by medical staff and other departments such as laboratory, pharmacy and radiology. CPOE is responsible for the order completion and reduces error which includes transcription and handwriting. It also provides entry at point of care and checking for duplicate incorrect tests and posting of charges. CPOE is used as a term with wide names and meanings such as Computerized Pharmacist Order Entry, Computerized Prescriber Order Entry and more often Computerized Physician Order Entry. Order entry is the responsibility of the pharmacist to verify the correct entry in the system and the usage of medication according to it. CPOE is a kind of patient management software which is improved by the communication and collaboration of health care practitioners (Lovern, 2001).

Methodology

Hospitals as a result of an accreditation process decided to give more emphasis on patient safety issues. Medication errors were an issue and a committee was formed to enhance patient safety. The committee reviewed research articles, which in general, support the adoption of CPOE solution to reduce medication errors. However, some research articles raised some concerns about the success of information systems implementations. As a result, hospitals decided to go for a project to assess the CPOE potential benefits and risks in a department. The result of the assessment would determine whether CPOE is worth the investment and hence be rolled-out to other departments and hospitals or not. The project team focused on several aspects and considerations for selecting the unit including the following: The number of attending physician (small group managing most patients), the availability of physician champion or other advocates, how well-managed patient care unit, the unit includes highly specialized physicians, and the degree of IT literacy of care providers in the unit (Sengstack, Gugerty, 2004).

CPOE projects in various hospitals

Hospitals adopt strong project management techniques and tools to ensure the success of CPOE deployment. Organizations should control scope changes. Inevitably, employees will keep requesting additional features that are not planned for the first phase. Organizations should establish a process for scope changes and decisions on making the changes should be based on a cost/benefit analysis. The "Go-Live" day is not the end of the CPOE project. It is essential that the vision of the CPOE project be clear to the project team and to the concerned departments

Hospitals decided to use the CPOE features already in the CPR, which has been already used at KAMC across all in-patient and out-patient departments. Physicians are familiar with the system as they use it to view the results of the procedures and orders. Therefore, hospitals would benefit from the data integration between the CPR and the ...