PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 3 Computerized medical records used in hospitals promise better health outcomes and fewer errors, but cause immense work flow issues, a U.S. study finds.
Computerized provider order entry, or CPOE, systems result in a host of unanticipated consequences, a study of U.S. hospitals by the Oregon Health & Science University found.
The researchers found in the 176 hospitals surveyed where CPOE systems have been integrated into daily operations -- doctors enter prescriptions and medical orders directly into a computer database -- unintended adverse consequences were virtually universal.
More than 70 percent of the institutions ranked the level of impact on operations as moderately to very important.
For example, doctors were spending much more time at the computer inputting prescriptions and other orders and sometimes physicians tried to enter orders for the wrong patient, the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found.
The work flow issues affect nearly every hospital staff member, said study leader Joan S. Ash, of the OHSU School of Medicine.
Copyright 2007 by UPI
