CPOE stragglers: One hospital's fix

When Christus Health implemented CPOE as part of its EHR initiative, the hospital chain didn't require all doctors replace traditional paper orders with the new computerized system. However, it made the capability available to all physicians -- and most hospitalists, surgeons, and other medical staff were relatively fast to adapt to the computerized system, said Dr. Luke Webster, vice president and chief medical information officer at Christus Health. "We implemented very aggressively, very quickly... but we did not mandate use. What we found, unsurprisingly, was physicians used CPOE in varying degrees of compliance. Some absolutely refused to use the order-entry system," he said, during a presentation at HIMSS14 in Orlando, on February 24.