Leapfrog: Long way to go in CPOE

INDUSTRY WATCH

Patient Safety

Even as it drew criticism that its "proven practices" for improving patient safety are an ineffective measure, the Leapfrog Group released findings of a survey conducted among urban hospitals in six U.S. regions.

One group of St. Louis hospitals protested

that Leapfrog's standards are too narrow to properly measure efforts to improve quality-and only one of 31 invited hospitals from the region responded to the group's voluntary survey. From all six regions, 48 percent-- or 241 of 497 invited hospitals-- completed the surveys. Leapfrog says that its recommended practices are "cutting edge" and that "very few hospitals" will have implemented all of them. Still, 53 percent of the surveyed facilities had put in place at least one of the three practices Leapfrog says improves patient safety: computerized physician order entry (CPOE); staffing of intensive care unit with physician specialists or intensivists; and referring cases to hospitals with the best evidence-based results or the most experience for select high-risk conditions and procedures.

Of the 241 responding hospitals, only 3.3 percent had computerized physician order entry (CPOE) as of late 2001, and only another 30 percent planned to implement CPOE before 2004. Ten percent of responding hospitals have specialist ICU staffing and another 18 percent plan to implement the practice in the next two years. Across the U.S., the number of hospitals meeting the experience/case volume ranged from a low of 12 percent meeting coronary artery bypass surgery to a high of 31 percent meeting coronary angioplasty volume recommendations.

For full survey results, visit www. leapfrog group.org.