Some research into the Computerized Physician Order Entry machine show that future use of this machine can potentially reduce the risk of adverse drug events, drug abuse, and medication errors. Subsequently, this can improve the quality of care exponentially. It has been estimated that only five percent of hospitals use the CPOE in their hospitals, though there is expected to be an increase of this usage in the future. Although the machine is expensive and difficult to implement, there has been an increase in interest of the CPOE. What is a CPOE machine? Literally, it translates to Computerized Physician Order Entry, but what does it do? Basically, it is a computer application that receives orders from …show more content…
The CPOE is an application that allows physicians to input orders into a computer system. This system is usually located in an inpatient or ambulatory setting. It replaces other methods of placing these orders such as written orders verbal orders like over the phone or by word of mouth, and faxing. Most of these systems allow physicians to specify different medication orders including lab orders, admission into the hospital, radiology department, referral, and procedure orders. The CPOE really has quite an impact on the safety of patients by ensuring that the orders are legible. This increases safety because there can be certainty of which order is needed versus when there is a hand written order, it could potentially be illegible. On its own, the CPOE certainly has its benefits, but when added with a CDS, or a clinical decision support system, it truly adds to the functionality of the machine. When implemented together, this system can improve medication safety and quality of care. It would also reduce the costs of inpatient …show more content…
It may be difficult to implement at first and very expensive, but ultimately the costs are lowered. Because of the high costs of Adverse Drug Events a year and the effect they have on the length of stay, to reduce these events would be to reduce the cost of patient care. This tends to help hospitals financially. This is due to the fixed costs of Medicare. With the length of stay being shorter, this cuts down on cost for the hospitals. Consequentially, this also reduces unnecessary utilization of care. Simulations have been run in order to determine whether or not the CPOE will really lower costs in the long run. According to these models, the cost of care due to mistakes in medication and ADEs are dropped by approximately fifty percent where the CPOE only has an incremental increase in cost of about twenty five percent. The cost in the long run is cheaper when implementing the system successfully versus the initial startup cost. In the short run, it’ll be more expensive, in the long run, it will