Computerized Physician Order Entry in Community Hospitals: Lessons from the Field
First Consulting Group
June 2003
This report reviews computerized physician order entry (CPOE) implementation approaches taken at ten community hospitals, and includes the observations of specialists from five CPOE software vendors who have assisted multiple hospitals. The report also details how some community hospitals have tackled the challenges of incorporating CPOE into the complex process of order management throughout the hospital. Practical advice is provided about how the hospitals built accountability, organized their projects, and designed and staged successful roll-outs.
Key findings from the report include:
- As part of their efforts to improve patient safety, many community hospitals in the United States are in various stages of implementing CPOE, a process in which physicians write their orders for hospital patients electronically into a networked computer.
- CPOE is still new to the hospital industry, with much of the experience in academic medical centers. Roughly nine out of ten U.S. hospitals are community hospitals where community practice physicians, rather than residents, must learn to write their orders electronically.
- Hospitals have struggled to engage physicians in CPOE because mastering a new way of doing their work requires effort and writing orders electronically takes more time than using pen and paper.
Physicians building the case for CPOE reported that working toward universal adoption over time was a more effective approach than instituting a mandate for CPOE adoption.