CPOE System Use Grows in Hospitals

M

ore hospitals are implementing computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems, suggest the results of a recent survey released by the Leapfrog Group.

The 2013 Leapfrog Hospital Survey, published on July 18, 2014, compiled and analyzed quality and safety data from 1437 hospitals. For participating hospitals to meet the Leapfrog standard of CPOE, 75% or more of inpatient medication orders needed to be placed using a CPOE system, and the system needed to have been tested to ensure physician alerts were working properly.

The results indicated that the number of hospitals using CPOE systems is growing. Overall, 43% of the hospitals surveyed met Leapfrog’s CPOE system standards in 2013. The number of hospitals meeting the standards grew from 113 in 2009 to 616 in 2013. The survey also found that hospitals are testing their systems more frequently. In 2013, 931 CPOE system tests were performed, compared with just 455 in 2012. In addition, the number of potentially fatal orders that did not receive an appropriate warning fell from 14.2% in 2012 to 12.5% in 2013. Of the 595 hospitals that did not meet the CPOE standard in 2012, 166 (27.9%) met the standard in 2013.

Despite these improvements in CPOE use, the results indicate that there is still room for improvement. In 2013, CPOE systems failed to alert physicians with appropriate warnings for 36% of orders.

“This failure rate is far too high, and points to the critical need for hospitals to make additional improvements to their medication ordering processes,” the report notes.