Compulsory Computerized Physician Order Entry Policy for Healthcare Staffs

This policy introduces the use of computerized physician order entry as a compulsory process in healthcare centers to reduce the risk of medication error and adverse events due to medical error. The policy statement, reporting, benefits, training and education, and discipline are discussed in detail.

New KSA University Hospital Policy #: XXXX
Effective Date: Month XX, XXX
Compulsory Computerized Physician Order Entry for Healthcare Staffs
Purpose- Introduce the use of computerized physician order entry as compulsory
process in healthcare center.
Authority- Healthcare leaders
Scope- Effective management of medication process and treatment and minimizing the
risk of medication error in an effective manner.
Responsibility- Healthcare professionals
POLICY
I. Policy Statement
Computerized physician order entry should be used as a compulsory process
while dealing with the medication and treatment of a patient in order to reduce
the risk of medication error and adverse event due to medical error in the health
care organizations.
II. Reporting
Medical error is defined as the preventable adverse effects of nursing care which
may be or may not be harmful to the patient. Event of medical care may include
inadequate diagnosis, improper treatment, medication error and wrong treatment
as well (Plews-Ogan et al., 2016). In spite of increasing health issues such as
communicable and non-communicable disease, injury and psychological
problem, medical error has been found to be one of the major contributor in the
high morbidity and mortality rate in a population (Makary & Daniel, 2016). Hence,
it is required to focus on the issue and introduce adequate measure in order to
reduce the risk of medical error to ensure patient safety and improve the care
service provided by the health care organizations to achieve positive health
outcomes. In this regards this policy aims to introduce effective measure such as
use of computerized physician order entry process to improve the medical
practice of the health professionals and reduce the risk of adverse events due to
medical error in an effective manner. The following benefits have been
considered which could improve the health care practice through the use of
CPOE and achieve positive health outcomes.
A. CPOE is a process of medical professional entering that helps to transfer the
information about medication process and instructions of treatment for a
particular patient to the different health professionals and different medical
team or department as well (Schiff et al., 2015).
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B. The benefits include:
1. Effective communication between the health professionals and they
could follow a particular order of administering medication and
providing treatment, hence, reduce the risk of medical error due to
miscommunication or confusion (Cresswell et al., 2015).
2. The system transfer information electronically through computer
application which reduces the error of transcription of medication
order and issue of unrecognizable hand writing (Schiff et al., 2015).
Hence, improve the care process through-
a) Proper medication to each patient.
b) Providing best treatment and care approach to a particular
patient according to his/her health condition.
c) Keeping record of a particular medication order and treatment
instructions to follow-up.
d) Identify any mistake in the care process so that it can be
managed with proper strategy as soon as possible.
III. Training and Education
In order to implement the policy and get positive outcomes it is required to train
and educate the health care staff about the use of technology, so that they could
utilize the process appropriately and improve their service. The new staffs would
be benefitted due to such training, however, the old staffs may face difficulties to
adapt the new process, hence, it is important to focus on separate training for the
old staffs to help them in understanding and utilizing the new process of medical
order entry (Wack et al., 2015).
IV. Discipline
Beside the implementation and training it is the personal responsibility of the
health professionals to comply with the guidelines of the policy. Therefore, some
disciplines and penalties have been introduced to ensure the effectiveness of the
policy.
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A. Health professionals will be trained about the new technology for 3 months.
B. It will be compulsory to use the CPOE process for each patient.
C. Person who will beach the guidelines of the policy will be penalized according
to the following process:
1. Beaching the policy for the first time will be considered unintentional
mistake.
2. Warning will be given during the beaching of the policy for second
time.
3. Third time the incident of not complying with the policy will be
considered as intentional activity and the person will be suspended.
4. If any adverse event occurs due to the irresponsible activity of a staff,
legal steps will be taken while considering-
a) Whether, incompliance with policy has occurred for the first time
Or,
b) Such incident has occurred before, but no report about any
adverse event.
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References:
Makary, M. A., & Daniel, M. (2016). Medical error—the third leading cause of death in
the US. Bmj, 353, i2139.
Plews-Ogan, M., May, N., Owens, J., Ardelt, M., Shapiro, J., & Bell, S. K. (2016).
Wisdom in medicine: what helps physicians after a medical error?. Academic
Medicine, 91(2), 233-241.
Schiff, G. D., Amato, M. G., Eguale, T., Boehne, J. J., Wright, A., Koppel, R., ... & Bates,
D. W. (2015). Computerised physician order entry-related medication errors: analysis of
reported errors and vulnerability testing of current systems. BMJ Qual Saf, 24(4), 264-
271.
Cresswell, K. M., Lee, L., Slee, A., Coleman, J., Bates, D. W., & Sheikh, A. (2015).
Qualitative analysis of vendor discussions on the procurement of Computerised
Physician Order Entry and Clinical Decision Support systems in hospitals. BMJ
open, 5(10), e008313.
Wack, M., Puymirat, E., Ranque, B., Georgin-Lavialle, S., Pierre, I., Tanguy, A., ... &
Durieux, P. (2015). Evaluating the Impact of Computerized Provider Order Entry on
Medical Students Training at Bedside: A Randomized Controlled Trial. PloS one, 10(9),
e0138094.
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