The Right Pace for CPOE

Metro Health also used online collaboration, posting interactive PDFs of all of its proposed order sets on its intranet. Users could log in and read the proposed sets, make comments, and interact and collaborate with the entire team. Allowing them to do this at their own convenience cut way down on meetings and made the process more productive, Clegg says.

The process also cut down on complaints from physicians after the sets were complete and made it easier to respond when physicians did complain after the fact, Clegg says. Everyone had a chance to look at the sets and contribute. 

NYGH leaders approached their CPOE implementation by investing a little more time on the front end to achieve faster implementation on the back end.

“Messaging is really key. We had a significant run-up for this project. We had a good three years before we went live. We just kept hitting them with this message,” Theal says.

Included in those messages were data from study after study with examples of evidence-based best practices in various fields. “I showed them [CPOE] will make a bigger difference to patient care than even some of the medications that are coming on the market,” Theal says. “And not only that—it will cost less.”

After the order sets were finalized—but before the organization was ready to launch the CPOE program—the team realized that those PDFs could stay on the site and physicians could begin to use them. They simply logged on, filled out the form, printed it, signed it, and handed it to the unit secretary. Although the result was still a paper document, it gave physicians a chance to become comfortable with the look and feel of the form and how to access and fill it out on the computer.