Business
Electronic entry gap widens
■ An occasional snapshot of current facts and trends in medicine.
Quick View. Posted Aug. 22, 2005
Overall electronic medication orders remain stable.
| Electronic medication orders | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Most-wired | Least-wired | All hospitals | ||||
| 2004 | 2005 | 2004 | 2005 | 2004 | 2005 | |
| Physicians | 27% | 28% | 3% | 2% | 12% | 13% |
| Nurses | 12% | 8% | 6% | 6% | 8% | 7% |
| Pharmacists | 50% | 58% | 64% | 61% | 66% | 67% |
| Nonclinicians | 8% | 5% | 7% | 3% | 6% | 4% |
| Manually ordered | 3% | 1% | 20% | 28% | 8% | 9% |
The gap between the 100 most-wired and the 100 least-wired hospitals and health systems in the country continued to grow in the past year.
The most-wired use more patient-safety information technology tools, including computerized physician order entry, electronic medication matching at the bedside and automated alerts and reminders, than do the least-wired, the survey found.
Forty-one percent of the most-wired hospitals have most of their physicians entering medication orders electronically compared with 8% at the least-wired hospitals -- the 100 survey respondents that posted the lowest scores. The survey was based on 502 responses from hospitals and health systems representing 1,255 hospitals.
Note: Due to rounding, numbers do not necessarily add up to 100%.
Source: "2005 Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study," Hospitals & Health Networks, July 12
