Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE)

Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE), is “a portion of a clinical information systems Electronic Health Records (E H R) that enables a patient’s care provider to enter an order for medication, clinical laboratory, or radiology test, or procedure directly into the computer. The system then transmits the request to the appropriate department, or individuals so that it can be carried out in real-time” (Glandon, Slovensky, and Smaltz 263). The reason why CPOE is vital to achieving the nation's patient safety and healthcare goal helps to achieve advocacy groups goals to reduce costs, improve the quality of care, and reduce clinical errors. According to Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) “approximately 90% inpatient medication errors

For example, in Ms. News’s interview with Chief Information Officer at Lawrence Memorial Hospital (LMH), he affirms that CPOE is a great tool to reduce clinical errors, save cost, improve patient quality. However, the biggest barrier for LMH is getting physicians to buy-in. Most physicians are not practicing evidence based medicine. Instead, physicians workflow derives from concepts and principles taught in traditional medical schools. A patient needs a prescription, so naturally, a medical practitioner would write out a prescription. However, this could be a significant risk for both the doctor and the patient. The physician in times past took several hours filtering through reports to stay abreast the last approved drugs (DRG) and deleted DRGs, their actions, and adverse reactions. Obviously sifting through lofty reports is not the most efficient, information may not update or simply may be overlooked. However, Mr. Williams shares with the CPOE model physicians can digitally write a script, look up patient DRG list, DRG interactions, DRG reactions, and DRG allergies. The CPOE model reduces more information to make a sound educated decision to provide quality service and care to patients. Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE) “provides the most advanced implementations of such systems that provide real-time clinical decision support such as dosage and alternative medication suggestions, duplicate therapy warnings, and drug-drug and drug allergy interaction checking” (Glandon, Slovensky, and