Quality and Safety: Order Sets are Essential
Enabling healthcare teams to deliver the complex care today's patients need is one of the major challenges facing clinical medicine. Order sets integrate medical knowledge into the ordering process, resulting in many benefits:
- Improved workflow
- Improved quality
- Improved safety
- Improved resource utilization
- Standardization of best practices across health systems
- Implementation of complex treatment regimes
Order sets address many quality and safety issues simultaneously, require no process redesign to implement, can be implemented across the organization and provide a sustained benefit. These attributes make order sets a desirable component of any quality improvement strategy.
Order Sets transform the ordering process dramatically improving patient care
Improved Quality
Adherence to best practices: Order sets can lead to significant improvements in utilizing evidence-based best practices. For example, order sets have lead to an over 400% increase in the ordering of DVT prophylaxis.
OSOS incorporates the most recent, evidence-based best practices from content experts across the country. This leads to improved quality of order sets.
Reduced mortality: Order sets have reduced the mortality of patients with sepsis by over 40%
Reduced hospital visits: A recent Ontario study showed that the use of order sets in the care of children with asthma in emergency departments reduced return visits by 50%.
Order sets were as effective as a referral to a pediatrician in preventing return visits.
Order sets can implement many quality initiatives simultaneously Facilitates implementation of and adherence to Safer Health Care Now! initiatives.
Improved Safety
Order sets can incorporate safe medication practices including:
- Institute for Safe Medication guidelines
- Fewer errors of omission
- Correct drug dosages
- Standardized abbreviations
- Clear ordering syntax
- Correct sequencing of orders
- Adherence to hospital formulary and parenteral manual practices