The computerized provider order entry system is a brilliant example of the digital transformation of medical care. As recent as 2009, many clinicians were still making handwritten orders. But most providers and practices across the country are now using some kind of CPOE. According to a study, they can eliminate at least 90 percent of errors that occur when physicians transcribe orders. CPOE systems offer many undeniable benefits to providers and patients, including:
- Safer medication orders
- Reduced errors in physician orders
- Improved provider efficiency
- Quicker reimbursements
- Reduction in redundant lab and radiology orders
With all the benefits of CPOE, providers and clinicians still have obvious challenges with its implementation. That’s why we’ll be looking at some of these obstacles and how to overcome them.
1. EHRs Offer a Weak Foundation for CPOE
While most major EHR vendors have a CPOE system embedded in their solution, it is hardly sufficient to meet most providers’ needs. Most organizations have unique specialties, and the basic order sets are inadequate to support daily physician workflows.
Ultimately, this creates an integration roadblock with the need to create hundreds of new order sets. This situation is common among providers that may even go as far as switching EHRs because of better CPOE implementation. The truth is that EHRs contain huge knowledge banks, but they are not designed to meet all the content needs of modern healthcare.
That is why it is vital to partner with an expert health IT developer like Lifepoint to develop a robust order set that will integrate seamlessly with your EHR. This will bring effective decision support to your clinicians at the point of care. While some expert clinicians prefer to work with unstructured content, the best solution is to gradually introduce structured order sets to physicians while showing the many benefits they offer for adequate decision support.
2. Manually Maintaining Order Sets is Tedious
After new order sets are developed and deployed, they need to be kept up-to-date to ensure their relevance at the point of care. If clinicians no longer trust the quality of the order sets and decision support, they will not use them often.
The solution to this challenge is to have an automated system for updating the content. Manual updating will be wasteful, inefficient, and tedious. On the other hand, developing an automatically updated system will allow clinicians to spend more time with patients instead of coming out to participate in order set review meetings. Order sets can be continuously updated from a trusted source after the clinicians and hospital management and developers have reached an agreement.
3. Over Dependence on Decision Support
As good as decision support systems are for CPOE, they can become a significant source of concern when relied upon 100%. This is particularly true in hospitals where physicians are overstretched, and they see the order sets in the CPOE as a cookie-cutter recipe. In some cases, physicians bypass safety alerts and proceed to authorize pre-written orders without adequate evaluation and testing.
To reduce this type of occurrence, providers can ensure that orders are evaluated periodically so that the system makes patient orders safer without compromising efficiency.
Get Professional Help to Overcome Obstacles in CPOE Implementation
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