KENNEWICK, Wash. -- In an effort to become more efficient and ensure patient safety, Kennewick General Hospital is implementing a new computerized physician order entry system, (CPOE) one that will put essentially make a patient's hospital visit from start to finish, flow smoothly.
KGH is doing it in phases, starting with 11 physicians and 150 personnel on October 16th, but eventually the system will include more than 600 users. That means doctors, nurses, laboratories, pharmacies and staff will eventually do away with paper, and enter all data about a patient on a computer system that shares information.
The staff who went "live" today were all trained, but had help on hand in case they got stuck or had questions. The system were customized to help save doctors from having to write things out, that are commonly used and putting them into the system. On top of saving time, the system is designed to be interactive and provide clinical decision support like warn doctors of potential medication errors, recent results, and prompts for standard screening tests.
It even lets staff know of potential dangerous drug interactions.
Federal Law requires hospitals to use electronic medical records by 2012. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act including the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provides incentives to accelerate the adoption of Health information technology via Medicaid and Medicare incentives to those eligible hospitals and eligible providers.
