GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare collaborates with many of the world’s leading healthcare organizations to support successful transition to computerized physician order entry (CPOE).
Situation
During inpatient care, medication errors are most likely to occur when the physician writes the medication order – due to issues as simple as poor handwriting or calculation errors (JAMA, 1998). Medication ordering for hospitalized infants and children requires precise calculations to ensure that dosages are appropriate for the child’s weight. In the majority of hospitals, physicians complete these calculations with a calculator or mental arithmetic.
Solution
GE Healthcare collaborates with many of the world’s leading healthcare organizations to support successful transition to computerized physician order entry (CPOE).
Customer Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (Philadelphia, Penn.) enables its physicians to enter nearly all of the organization’s inpatient orders using CPOE, supported by IDX® Carecast™, a clinical information system now known as Centricity® Enterprise. Using this technology, the hospital’s clinical IT team also developed a sophisticated set of expert rules to address the precise medication requirements of infants and children.
Better Health & Lower Costs
When a physician working in Jefferson University Hospital’s inpatient pediatric care areas (including the neonatal intensive care unit) prepares a medication order, the clinical information system automatically calculates the appropriate medication dosage based on the child’s weight and other factors, using expert rules. In addition, the expert rules ensure that physician orders comply with national patient safety goals set by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations to standardize concentrations of medications administered by intravenous infusion, which can carry a high risk.
Jefferson University Hospital measured the number of pharmacist interventions – calls from pharmacists to physicians to double-check the details of medication orders. These interventions serve as indicators of averted potential medication errors. Following CPOE implementation on its pediatric units, the organization reduced pharmacist interventions related to medication orders by 97.6 percent, because of the improved quality and clarity of the original medication orders. In addition, Jefferson University Hospital decreased interventions for intravenous infusions by 92.5 percent.
“Collaboration between physicians and pharmacists has always served as an essential medication safety check. With CPOE, we’ve taken error prevention to the next level by placing rigorous safeguards at the point of care – critical improvements for all patients, especially for the infants and children we care for in our pediatric units,” said Dr. Jonathan Gottlieb, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President for Clinical Affairs for Jefferson University Hospital.
