The impact of hospitalwide computerized physician order entry on medical errors in a pediatric hospital

• HIT Description: Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: To assess whether CPOE in a pediatric hospital would decrease medication errors
  
• Years of study: 2002-2003
  
• Study Design: Pre-post
  
• Outcomes: Impact on patient safety
  

• Settings: University pediatric hospital
• Intervention: Compare medication errors and adverse drug events before and after implementation of CPOE with drug warnings
• Evaluation Method: Utilization data from quality improvement office.
• Description: Established warnings, selected by physician advisors, were placed in the computer system. Drugs were cross-referenced in an online formulary.
• Strategy: Before implementation, a hospital wide initiative to emphasize ADE reporting was initiated. Three months before the "Go Live" date all clinicians and ancillary presonnel started CPOE training. Training lasted about 2 to3 hours, with extra instruction available by request. A subset of staff served as local CPOE experts in their specific units.
• Quality of Care and Patient Safety Outcome: ADE rate pre-CPOE was 0.30 per 1,000 doses; post-CPOE rate was 0.37 per 1,000 doses. The rate of harmful ADEs decreased significantly from 0.05 per 1,000 doses to 0.03 per 1,000 doses.
• Changes in efficiency and productivity: Transcription errors were eliminated.