Publication:

Utilization Levels of Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) By Health Care Workers in Mbagathi District Hospital Nairobi, Kenya

Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) is the process of entering medication orders or other physician instructions electronically instead of on paper charts. It was also defined as the electronic prescribing systems that intercept errors at the time they occur, typically when a medication is ordered. CPOE has the potential to decrease medical errors and improve quality. Our health system plans to implement CPOE in response to the ARRA HITECH Act. Despite the well-documented ability of information technology to reduce medical errors and pinpoint where potential safety problems are likely to occur, hospitals and physicians remain reluctant to adopt CPOE systems. However, continuing barriers to implementation of information technology that most providers and payers recognize as important, organizations have made very big changes in how they look at patient safety. Failure to use of the CPOE system has caused increased errors related to poor handwriting or transcription of medication orders. The objective of this study was to assess Utilization levels of CPOE by health care workers in Mbagathi District Hospital. In specific, to identify barriers to Utilization of CPOE by health care workers, to determine factors affecting the utilization of CPOE by clinicians and to determine the solutions to overcome the barriers in utilization of CPOE. After data was collected cleaning was done then entered in a database using SPSS and Excel software. Test for normality was done to identify outliers. Frequency tables were running and cross tabulations to identify relationships. Regression analysis was important too as this helped the researcher get the correlations and relationships of data collected. Despite the apparent efficacy of CPOE systems, only 10–15 percent of hospitals use them. There are 98,000reporteddeaths per year and many more injuries resulting from medical errors, which made patient safety a top priority in USA health care. Many medication errors are the most common causes of preventable injuries in hospitals and could have been prevented by computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems. The majority of physicians believed CPOE would lead to a reduction of medical errors and more efficient patient care. However, physicians were highly concerned with how CPOE would affect their own work efficiency as most of them still use manual system due to lack of knowledge of computer use as 75% of physicians were not trained to use CPOE while 81% were using paper prescription.