Making Computerized Provider Order Entry Work

Despite all the jokes about the poor quality of physician handwriting, physician adoption of computerized provider order entry (CPOE) in hospitals still lags behind other industries’ use of technology. As of the end of 2010, less than 22% of hospitals had deployed CPOE. Yet experts claim that this technology reduces over 80% of medication errors and could prevent an estimated 522,000 serious medication errors annually in the US. Even though the federal government has offered $20 billion dol...