Further evidence of the superiority of the VA medical record system (CPRS)
over at least one widely-used proprietary order entry system comes from this
study in the latest JAMIA (Journal of the American Medical Informatics
system). The highlights from the abstract are copied below.
http://www.jamia.org/cgi/content/abstract/8/5/499
<http://www.jamia.org/cgi/content/abstract/8/5/499>
If I'm not mistaken, the proprietary system is a product from Eclipsys.
Gary Kantor, MD
University Hospitals of Cleveland
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Design and Measurement: A standardized instrument for measuring user
satisfaction with physician order entry systems was mailed to internal
medicine and medicine-pediatrics house staff physicians. The subjects
answered questions on each system using a 0 to 9 scale.
Results: The survey response rates were 63 and 64 percent for the two order
entry systems. Overall, house staff were dissatisfied with the commercial
system, giving it an overall mean score of 3.67 (95 percent confidence
interval [95%CI], 3.37-3.97). In contrast, the CPRS had a mean score of 7.21
(95% CI, 7.00-7.43), indicating that house staff were satisfied with the
system. Overall satisfaction was most strongly correlated with the ability
to perform tasks in a "straightforward" manner.
Conclusions: User satisfaction differed significantly between the two order
entry systems, suggesting that all order entry systems are not equally
usable. Given the national usage of the two order entry systems studied,
further studies are needed to assess physician satisfaction with use of
these same systems at other institutions.
