Phoenix Children's Hospital is now placing most of its medication and non-medication orders electronically through a newly activated computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system.
Billed as one of the 10 largest freestanding children's hospitals in the country, the Phoenix, Ariz.-based hospital is using its Sunrise Acute Care system, developed by Atlanta-based Elipsys, to handle 99 percent of all medication orders, officials say.
A major factor in the hospital's successful CPOE launch was its hybrid rollout methodology, said Robert L. Meyer, the hospital's president and CEO. He said each department received embedded clinical IT staff support and advanced training for "super users," who were empowered to roll out the system at their own pace, with a common hard go-live deadline.
"Following a mandate from our medical committee to take CPOE hospital-wide, we decided to take a very different approach to physician adoption of electronic order and decision support," said Meyer. "Thanks to the high level of commitment from physician champions who understood how CPOE makes clinical life better, we were able to launch with a 95 percent adoption rate. This was higher than we expected."
Meyer said the milestone was a joint effort between the physician community and the information technology department.
"The level of acceptance and appreciation by our physicians really has been a major victory with everyone aligned toward the same goal," he said.
In the months since their go-live date, Phoenix Children's has sustained a 99 percent adoption rate for CPOE, officials said. Each day, physicians and other authorized clinical staff place an average of 3,250 orders electronically, 750 of which are medication orders.
Expands CPOE use across the hospital
Phoenix Children''s hospital-wide activation extends its long-term use of Eclipsys' CPOE solution in the pediatric intensive care and neonatal intensive care units. It's the latest milestone in a multi-phase effort to extend enabling technologies throughout the care environment.
Last fall, the hospital activated Eclipsys' clinical documentation solution, Knowledge-Based Charting, to transform nursing notes into electronic format and establish the foundation for an enterprise electronic medical record with clinical decision support. In combination with Eclipsys' document imaging solution, the new clinical solutions will provide the hospital's care delivery team with fully integrated clinical workflows designed to help improve clinical outcomes, care efficiency and turnaround time, according to hospital executives
The enterprise-wide clinical technology initiative also builds upon Phoenix Children's use of Eclipsys' revenue cycle solutions, which officials said have improved pre-service activities and claim processing efficiency.
Phoenix Children's recently announced a $588 million expansion plan that includes a significant upgrade of the hospital's current campus, an aggressive physician recruitment effort and new satellite centers in high growth areas around the city.
