Clinical question: Does implementing a patient verification dialog that appears at the beginning of each ordering session, accompanied by a 2.5-second delay, decrease wrong-patient orders?
Background: Computerized provider order entry (CPOE) is known to increase the rate of wrong-patient order entry and, although the rate in the ED has not been well characterized, CPOE wrong-patient order entry has been known to lead to fatalities in the emergency setting.
Study design: A parallel-controlled, experimental, before-after design.
Setting: Five teaching hospital EDs were included in New York City: two adult EDs, two pediatric EDs, and a combined ED, all totaling 250,000 annual visits.
Synopsis: The EDs in this study implemented a patient verification module into their Allscripts system. This verification included three identifiers: full name, birth date, and medical record number. A 2.5-second delay in ability to close the alert was implemented. All patients in the ED rooms were included in the analysis. The primary outcome was intercepted wrong-patient orders, as measured by number of retract and re-order events.
A baseline data set over four months was compared to immediate post-intervention data, as well as data two years post-intervention, with 30% and 25% reductions in the rate of wrong-patient orders, respectively. Of all retractions, 41% were for diagnostic procedures, 21% for medications, and 38% were nursing and miscellaneous orders. The majority of orders were placed by resident physicians (51%), followed by attending physicians (34%), physician assistants (12%), and others (3%).
This method of observation is limited to identified and corrected wrong-patient orders.
Bottom line: Implementing a patient verification alert can significantly decrease the number of order retractions and re-orders due to wrong-patient order entry in the ED setting.
Citation: Green RA, Hripcsak G, Salmasian H, et al. Intercepting wrong-patient orders in a computerized provider order entry system [published online ahead of print December 17, 2014]. Ann Emerg Med.