Characteristics of CPOE Systems and Obstacles to Implementation That Physicians Believe Will Affect Adoption

BACKGROUND: Computerized Physician Order Entry (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. OBJECTIVES: To determine (A) physicians' projections of the most important characteristics of a CPOE system that will affect their willingness to adopt CPOE, and (B) the obstacles they foresee in adopting CPOE. METHODS: All members of our health system's physician quality organization were invited to participate in a confidential survey. RESULTS: Two hundred twenty-four of 549 (41%) recipients responded to the survey. Respondents ranked "disruption in my work routine" (72%) and "improve efficiency in placing orders" (63%) as the two most important characteristics that would affect their utilization of CPOE. They believed CPOE would enable orders to be placed more efficiently (3.3, sd = 1.2), carried out rapidly (3.4, sd = 0.9), and have fewer errors (3.7, sd = 0.9). The most commonly cited obstacles to CPOE implementation were: Efficiency-Inefficiency (23%), Hardware Availability (12.7%), Computer Restrictions (10.8%), Training (8.8%), Simplicity - Ease of Use (8.5%), and Physician Buy-in (8.1%). CONCLUSIONS: The majority of physicians believed CPOE would lead to a reduction of medical errors and more efficient patient care. However, physicians are highly concerned with how CPOE will affect their own work efficiency.