Leapfrog Group wants hospitals to monitor, not just implement, CPOE systems

To achieve “true meaningful use” of a computerized prescriber-order-entry (CPOE) system, according to the organization known as the Leapfrog Group, a hospital must routinely test and monitor that system after implementation. The call for hospitals to do more than “plug and play” their CPOE system comes from an organization that has been pushing for the adoption of this technology for 10 years. In a report released on June 30, Leapfrog announced that hospitals’ CPOE systems did not produce an appropriate warning for one third of the potentially fatal medication orders entered during a simulation. The CPOE systems also failed to produce an appropriate warning for half of the orders that would be expected to result in a serious adverse event. But nearly half of the hospitals that adjusted their CPOE system and related protocols on the basis of the 2008 test results performed better in 2009. To use the simulation tool, a hospital had to complete Leapfrog’s annual survey, which includes indicating whether the facility has a CPOE system functioning in at least one inpatient unit. About 323 of the 1244 hospitals that completed the survey in 2009 had such a system.