Factors Influencing Implementation of Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) in Hospitals － Experiences From a Medical Health Network in Northern Taiwan

Since the publication of “To Err is Human” by the Institute of Medicine in 1999, patients’ safety and care quality has become the top priority task force for every hospital. Application of information technologies (IT) in current era is feasible and practical. However, implementations of IT systems always encounter entry barriers, especially by doctors due to their heavy work load and practice culture.
After implementation of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system in the hospitals of a medical health network in Northern Taiwan, 203 medical personnel who had used the system were investigated by using constructed questionnaires. Those include medical residents, visiting staff and nurse practitioners. With applications of the technology acceptance model (TAM), factors such as computer subjective effectiveness, experience in using CPOE, perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), behavior intention of use (BI) and actual system use were studied and analyzed.
As with other reports, TAM is a practical model in healthcare IT. In the present survey, PU and PEOU are still the factors that precede the BI and resultant actual use. Previous CPOE experience and computer subjective effectiveness can influence PEOU which in turn affects PU and BI. Nevertheless, PU can lead to BI and actual use. One’s usage of computer over 5 hours per week has positive effect on computer subjective effectiveness. The proposed study explained 60.5% of accumulated explained variance.