Mount Auburn Hospital is continually looking at and integrating systems and processes to ensure their patients’ safety. Over the last few years, the hospital has been implementing an electronic prescribing system called Computer Physician Order Entry or CPOE. Only 10 percent of the nation’s hospitals have this advanced prescribing system.

“Mount Auburn Hospital is committed to patient safety and CPOE is proven to be effective,” says Greg Sophis, RPh, director of pharmacy at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

Mr. Sophis says CPOE is a system in which physicians enter medication orders into a computer, rather than handwriting them on paper. The system intercepts or catches medication errors when they’re most likely to occur – at the time of order entry.

The electronic prescribing system streamlines the ordering process as well. “CPOE eliminates several steps, and with each step there’s the chance of producing an error,” says Mr. Sophis.

When a physician places an order, all the relevant patient information is right there at the physician’s fingertips. Laboratory, test results, medications the patient is currently on or allergic to – anything that has to do with important patient information is right there in the computer.

“Everything is in real time. For example, when lab results are ready, it’s updated in the system for our medical staff to see,” says Mr. Sophis.

Once an order is placed, it’s automatically checked for any potential errors or problems, such as an overdose or allergic reaction. According to The Leapfrog Group, an organization that provides information on healthcare quality allowing consumers to compare hospitals, other benefits to CPOE include:

· Prompts alerting physicians of the possibility of drug interaction, allergy or overdose

· Accurate, up-to-date information on new