High error rate creates new urgency for CPOE: Why the technology may become a mandate, not an option

Today's Hospitalist
July 9, 2008

When a report released earlier this year found that one in every 10 patients at six community hospitals in Massachusetts suffered an adverse drug event, computerized physician order entry (CPOE) technology finally received some of the attention it deserves.

The report found, for example, that CPOE systems could have prevented as many as 70% of the events tracked in the study.  Perhaps just as importantly, the report also dispelled some of the myths and misconceptions that have hounded the technology for years.

...Wendy Everett, ScD, president of the New England Healthcare Institute, which co-sponsored the "Saving Lives, Saving Money" report with the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, says that hospitalists have long championed CPOE at their hospitals.  But many others in health care -- including physicians who would be end users of CPOE systems -- have a long way to go to embrace the technology.

 Dr. Everett is optimistic that the data in her organizations report, along with a numbner of nascent trends, may help change that.  Payers and state legislators, for example, are finding new ways to steer hospitals and physicians toward CPOE.

In her home state of Massachusetts, for instance, health plans and the legislature are creating both positive and negative incentives for hospitals to put CPOE in place by 2012.  Dr. Everett talked to Today's Hospitalist about the study results and what they mean for hospitals.

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