Study: CPOE adoption calls for long-term effort

It may be a good idea for your organization to implement computerized physician order-entry, but don't kid yourself--keeping it going is no picnic. That is one of the main conclusions drawn by a new report sponsored by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and the New England Healthcare Institute.

To conduct their study (performed by Computer Sciences Corp.) the two groups looked at the CPOE implementations undertaken by small- to mid-sized hospitals located across the U.S. Most of the hospitals have had CPOE in place for several years, with physicians entering from 80 to 100 percent of orders through their systems.

Among the study's key conclusions was that while having physicians, nurses and other key clinicians on board for your launch is important, it's also critical to get their commitment for the longer term, as they're vital in providing user training and support. To get physicians involved, they found that it was important to offer one-on-one coaching, as physicians didn't access web-based training, even when it was available.

It also concluded that providers planning a CPOE implementation should look at getting outside help in preparing and maintaining computerized order sets, as maintaining them turns out to be much harder than the hospitals expected.

In addition, researchers warned that the CPOE systems in use at the six hospitals often didn't perform equally well across all departments, prompting at least one hospital to spend more money to customize the system for some clinical areas.

To get more study information:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)

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