CPOE Report Released Feb. 14, 2008

The Massachusetts Hospital CPOE Initiative released its latest report, Saving Lives, Saving Money: The Imperative for Computerized Physician Assisted Order Entry Adoption in Massachusetts Hospitals on February 14, 2008. The Clinical Baseline and Financial Impact Study was conducted to address uncertainty in terms of the quality and cost benefits of implementing CPOE.

Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) and the New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI), joined by a team headed by Dr. David Bates, Chief of the Division of General Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and other experts in the field, conducted an in depth analysis of six Massachusetts community hospitals. The study teams reviewed 4,200 charts to determine the baseline level of preventable adverse drug events, and the unnecessary use of expensive drug and laboratory tests, that could be improved by implementing CPOE. The results are outlined in this document.