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This focus area supports collaborative work on testing tools and utilities for health care providers. Note that links on this page to any non-federal sites do not constitute an endorsement by HHS or any of its employees of the information and products presented. To have your testing tool listed here please send an email to: SITTeam@hhs.gov 

The CPOE Evaluation Tool

The CPOE Evaluation Tool was designed by medication safety experts and researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the University of Utah to test the ability of inpatient CPOE systems to alert prescribers to common, serious medication errors. In addition, the Tool was designed to help hospitals improve on their use of clinical decision support to reduce adverse drug events and improve medication safety. The Tool was first included in the Leapfrog Hospital Survey in 2008. This is the fourth release of the tool (version 3.5) and includes minor updates to test patients and orders, as well as updates to the Orders and Observation Sheet and Online Answer Form.

The CPOE Evaluation Tool includes both a Sample Test and an Adult Inpatient Test. All hospitals are urged to complete the Sample Test prior to the Adult Inpatient Test. Only a hospital's score on the Adult Inpatient Test is used to determine their overall performance on Leapfrog's CPOE Standard.

The timed test provides users with a set of Test Patients, along with a corresponding set of Test Medication Orders, that users enter into their hospital’s CPOE and related clinical systems. The physician conducting the test records the advice or information they received, if any, from their hospital’s CPOE system onto the Orders and Observation Sheet, and then completes the Online Answer Form. Users receive immediate scoring and feedback summarizing the results of the test. The Tool includes twelve order checking categories including drug-drug interaction, drug-allergy, therapeutic duplications, single and daily dose limits, and others. More information about the order checking categories included in the CPOE Evaluation Tool is available in the CPOE Evaluation Tool Instructions.

Find more information at http://www.leapfroggroup.org/survey-materials/prepare-cpoe-tool