Improving Safety by Basic Computerizing Outpatient Prescribing

The computerized physician order entry (CPOE) intervention provides physicians with a menu of medications from the formulary, default doses, and a range of potential doses for each medication. Physicians were required to enter dosage, route, and frequency for all orders. Also, CPOE ensured that all orders were legible and included the prescribing physician's signature. For a number of medications, the system displayed relevant laboratory results on the screen at the time of ordering. Other features included consequent orders, which are orders that should follow from other orders, and drug-allergy checking, drug-drug interaction checking, and drug-laboratory checking. This included checking for the most frequent drug allergies, about 80 carefully selected drug-drug interactions, and several drug-laboratory combinations

Routine Care