Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) In Healthcare Facilities

Introduction to CPOE

A CPOE is computer software which provides a computer platform for healthcare personnel to smoothly and efficiently key-in the daily medical records and report on a computer for safe storage and easier access. This platform is presented to the users on a network and provides a user-friendly user interface which is easily operated by all trained users. For that matter, the recent researches have shown that most hospitals – both small and large setups, have shown great interest in these form of application. This has as a result to the gradual extinction of the old order methods as most healthcare facilities are going for this method of order keeping (Coustasse, Shaffer, Conley, Coliflower, Deslich, & Sikula , 2015). This paper will focus on the evaluation of the CPOE, its implementation, benefits, challenges and finally, recommendations on what improvement can be made on the same (Han et al., 2016).

Drug mistakes are the most widely recognized reason for wounds in clinics that can be preventable. The selection and actualizing of Automated doctor arrange passage (CPOE) frameworks can decrease actual medicine blunders rates by 55 percent. The utilization of CPOE frameworks enables social insurance suppliers to enter organizes electronically, and additionally, deal with those consequences of the requests. By enhancing the nature of consideration and patient security, the quantity of therapeutic services frameworks actualizing CPOE should increment. Notwithstanding, usage is more than data innovation changes in medicinal services conveyance, for example, lessening the potential for human blunder, diminishing time to mind conveyance, enhance arrange precision, reduce time for arrange affirmation and turnaround, improve clinical choice help at the purpose of consideration, make significant data all the more promptly accessible and enhance correspondence among doctors, attendants, drug specialists, different clinicians, and in addition patients (Kruse, & Goetz, 2015).

There are many benefits associated with the implementation and adoption of the CPOE systems in hospitals and other healthcare setups. Among this benefits are the fact that, with the proper use of the CPOE for the management of clients’ medical records, the issue of displacement of such records. This is mainly because each client’s records are located in an individual file location; hence editing and formatting it is easy (Han et al, 2016). Another advantage associated with the implementation of CPOE is the reduction in manual work that in many cases lead to errors related to miscommunication in the process of data entry. Besides, in cases where the CPOE includes a module that helps in making clinical decisions, the quality of services give to the patients are of high quality. This is mainly because, the system comprehensively documents cases for each patient who has been attended to in the specific health facility and checks analyses the cases in determining what therapy is best for each example (Lewing, Hatfield, & Sansgiry, 2017).

Benefits of Implementing CPOE

The ordering process is a process that initially required a lot of workforces. For that matter, this process cost organization quite a vast amount of money in ensuring its successfulness. With the introduction of CPOE systems, the process is now straightforward and less tedious and thus requires little workforce (Prgomet, Li, Niazkhani, Georgiou, & Westbrook, 2016).. For that matter, it has significantly reduced the initial cost of ordering. Besides, the introduction of such systems has worked to the best interests of the healthcare facility’s personnel. This is because it has eased the process of information sharing among the various departments for a given facility. That is, in case one doctor needs to send a message to other departments within the facility, all he/she need to do is type in their pc, specify the destination location and click a send button (Lin, Chan, Mohindra, Milne, Thoma, & Bond, 2017).  

I once worked in a private hospital called shalom hospital as a practitioner nurse, in the critical care department. This hospital had implemented a CPOE system that helped them deal with the various daily operations. Whenever a patient was referred to me, I did it have to ask him or her for their personal details or what their issue was. All I needed to do, was to login to the CPOE application on my PC and key-in the patient’s unique ID number and all their details and the issues appeared on my screen. It was very interesting. For that matter, I decided to learn explicitly how the system worked.

I realized that when a patient first arrives to the hospital, he/she goes to the customer cares’ desk. If it’s the first time to visit the facility, he is asked to provide his passport to the customer care personnel. The customer care personnel register the patient using the personal details presented on the passport and on clicking the “enter” key on the computer keyboard, the system automatically generates a hospital card for that particular patient. This card has a unique number emended on it. This number is the one that the system uses to identify the patient. The card is printed and given to the patient after he/she pays to acquire it.  The patient is ready to proceed to the next step.

I then proceeded to the next stage. There, the person in charge logged in to the system and keyed in the patient’s ID number, to access the patient’s file. Once the file appeared, patient’s weight, temperature, blood pressure, Heart rate, and respiration rate was taken, recorded on the file and saved in the computer system. The patient was again ready to proceed to the next level.

Challenges of Implementing CPOE

The patient waited for some time and his name was called out from the consultation room and he walked in. I also followed to see what really happens there. The in charge personnel again logged in to the system and entered the ID number for that particular number and his file appeared indicating that he was he had cleared with the initial stages. The patient then explained all the symptoms he had to the nurse as she recorded it on the e-file. She referred the patient to the lab for some test.

The technician accessed the patient’s e-file using the same process and on viewing the records from the consultation room, she took some blood and stool samples for testing from the patient. She then requested the patient to wait outside for the result. He waited for about 20-30 minutes and the result were out. The patient was send to the payment section where the person in charge checked what remedy was recommended and the total price was set in the system for the same. The patient paid for the medication and all other services offered and was referred to the pharmacy section to receive the prescriptions and medication. After receiving the medication, the patient was free to go home and requested by the pharmacist to come back after a week for the checkup. It was such an interactive and interesting journey. It was fast and efficient and the patient went home happy and satisfied.

Conclusion

Any healthcare facility seeking to improve the quality of the services they provide to their patients and also reduce the cost of ordering must implement a CPOE system. This system comes with a wide range of benefits and works in the best interests of both patients and the healthcare personnel.

References

Beam, K. S., Cardoso, M., Sweeney, M., Binney, G., & Weingart, S. N. (2017). Examining perceptions of computerized physician order entry in a neonatal intensive care unit. Applied clinical informatics, 8(02), 337-347.

Charles, K., Cannon, M., Hall, R., & Coustasse, A. (2014). Can utilizing a computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system prevent hospital medical errors and adverse drug events? Perspectives in Health Information Management, 11(Fall).

Coustasse, A., Shaffer, J., Conley, D., Coliflower, J., Deslich, S., & Sikula Sr, A. (2015). Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE): Benefits and concerns-a status report. In Healthcare Administration: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 726-742). IGI Global.

Han, J. E., Rabinovich, M., Abraham, P., Satyanarayana, P., Liao, T. V., Udoji, T. N., … & Martin, G. S. (2016). Effect of electronic health record implementation in critical care on survival and medication errors. The American journal of the medical sciences, 351(6), 576-581.

Lewing, B. D., Hatfield, M. D., & Sansgiry, S. S. (2017). Impact of Computerized Provider Order Entry Systems on hospital staff pharmacist workflow productivity: A three-site comparative analysis based on the level of CPOE implementation. Journal of Hospital Administration, 7(1), 1.

Lin, K., Chan, K., Mohindra, R., Milne, K., Thoma, B., & Bond, C. (2017). SGEM Hot Off the Press: Computer provider order entry (CPOE) and emergency department flow. Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine, 19(2), 147-153.

Kruse, C. S., & Goetz, K. (2015). Summary and frequency of barriers to adoption of CPOE in the US. Journal of medical systems, 39(2), 15.

Prgomet, M., Li, L., Niazkhani, Z., Georgiou, A., & Westbrook, J. I. (2016). Impact of commercial computerized provider order entry (CPOE) and clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) on medication errors, length of stay, and mortality in intensive care units: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 24(2), 413-422.

Rai, A., Keil, M., & Mindel, V. (2015). How Does Computerized Provider Order Entry Implementation Impact Clinical Care Quality, Cycle Time, and Physician Job Demand Over Time?