In our EHR medication orders may be placed multiple ways. 

• Physician users  may enter medication orders themselves, in which they would sign it at the time of placing the order.
• Nursing users may enter medication orders as Verbal Orders, where the order is placed by a nursing user and the Physician can sign the order electronically at a later date/time. 

My question is if a nursing user places a verbal order for a medication, should the author date/time be when the order is placed by the nurse or signed by the physician?  I have placed an example scenario below. 

What date/time should be pulled for the "Medication, Order" author date/time in the example below?

Example:

• A patient is admitted to on 01/01/21 at 08:00 am.
• A Nursing user places a Medication Order on 01/01/21 at 09:00 am.
• The medication is administered to the patient on 01/01/21 at 09:30 am. 
• The Patient is discharged on 01/01/21 at 10:00 am.
• The physician then signs the order electronically on 01/02/21 at 07:00 am. 

Notes:

Quality Data Model, Version 5.5 Guidance Update

• author dateTime references the date and time the medication order (prescription) is authored.

QRDA I Release 5.2 Implementation Guide

• QDM Attribute: Author dateTime – the time the order was signed; QDM Attribute: prescriberId is represented using author/assignedAuthor/id