Improvement Stories:
Leading the Nation in Safer Prescribing
Partners HealthCare community hospitals were ranked in the nation’s top 10% of hospitals in prescribing medications by computer. This is known as computerized provider order entry, or CPOE. CPOE systems have been shown to reduce medication errors dramatically, according to research at Partners HealthCare and elsewhere. CPOE has been available at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General hospitals for some time. It is now also fully implemented at Faulkner and Newton-Wellesley hospitals and the North Shore Medical Center. This makes these hospitals among a very small number of community hospitals in the country that use CPOE. We are also using CPOE in our teaching, rehabilitation, and specialty hospitals.