A big agenda item for most hospitals in the United States is implementing computerized physician order entry (CPOE) for inpatients. This stems from the endorsement of CPOE in the 1999 Institute of Medicine report To Err is Human, subsequently reinforced by industry and legislative responses. For example, the Leapfrog Group, a consortium of more than 160 organizations, including Fortune 500 companies and other large health care purchasers working to improve patient safety, established the Leapfrog Group standards for CPOE in order to encourage hospital use of computerized physician order entry with clinical decision support to prevent medication errors. In addition, Senate Bill 1875 in California called for a medication error reduction strategy in hospitals that included the use of technology such as CPOE.

At the time this report was developed, a very small percentage of hospitals in the United States had CPOE in place. This meant that most were looking at the options for adding or enhancing clinical systems supporting inpatient care and successfully implementing tools such as CPOE. This report provides a starter set of information for decisionmakers in hospitals to help them organize their CPOE effort and launch the search for an appropriate CPOE solution. It is a valuable tool for hospitals working to meet the Leapfrog Group CPOE standards or to comply with SB 1875, as it examines the vendor marketplace, clinical decision support tools, and important considerations in organizing the search for a vendor solution.

Both this report and an overview of the evaluation tool are available on the Leapfrog Group site through the link below.