Victoria General switches on electronic ordering

VICTORIA, BC – The Victoria General Hospital has switched from paper orders to a computerized system to store, send and receive medical and clinical orders. The computerized provider order entry solution – or CPOE, for short – allows doctors and hospital staff to send orders for medication, diagnostic imaging and laboratory tests electronically.

“We’ll be going from the decades-old practice of writing orders on a paper chart … to a system whereby we enter the order directly into a computer,” said Dr. Chloe Lemire-Elmore (pictured), Victoria General’s chief of staff and medical director. “It’s a change we’re all looking forward to.”

CPOE is designed to streamline workflow, reduce the time between ordering and administering a medication and limit the mistakes that result from hand-written orders.

“Handwritten orders are open to misinterpretation and can cause errors at the ordering, interpreting and transcribing stages of creating an order,” according to Island Health.

“An additional benefit is that the information all goes into a database, so it’s easy to retrieve information about what’s been done, whether the order was indeed processed and the status of it,” said Dr. Lemire-Elmore. “Other providers from elsewhere can access the history, the tests, the treatments, so that people don’t have to continuously repeat their story.”

In the short-term, however, the hospital expects longer wait times as doctors and staff get used to the new system.

“We expect there to be some slowdowns, we expect there to be some glitches and we’re prepared to address that,” said Marko Peljhan, Victoria General’s vice president of Clinical Services. “We’re reducing surgeries and ambulatory volumes … just so our staff and physicians have a little bit more time to work with the system.”

Victoria General plans to bring in more staff to help mitigate disruptions. It has also opened a temporary urgent care centre in which doctors will treat patients with less-urgent injuries and ailments to limit emergency department delays.

The Gorge Road Hospital and South Island Surgical Centre will adopt the new system at the same time. The Royal Jubilee Hospital made the change in July.

The next sites due to change to the new system include Saanich Peninsula Hospital, Cowichan District Hospital, and Comox and Campbell River hospitals.

Timelines have not yet been finalized and Royal Jubilee and Victoria General’s electronic systems first have to be stabilized before moving on to the next site.

Lemire-Elmore said that most staff are looking forward to the new system.

“Overall, it’s excitement, certainly some apprehension. Any major change comes with some risk of unforeseen challenges. What I do know is we’re building on the successes of the Jubilee Hospital and also on the lesson they’ve learned,” she said. “The majority of the unforeseen problems have come to light and been addressed.”

Source: Victoria News and The Times-Colonist.