On Saturday, Sept. 14, the Victoria General Hospital will begin using a computerized system to store, send and receive medical and clinical orders.

"We鈥檒l be going from the decades-old practice of writing orders on a paper chart ... to a system whereby we enter the order directly into a computer," said Dr. Chloe Lemire-Elmore, Victoria General's chief of staff and medical director. "It鈥檚 a change we鈥檙e all looking forward to."

Called computerized provider order entry 鈥� or CPOE, for short 鈥� the system allows doctors and hospital staff to log patient information, including medication, CT scan, X-ray and laboratory orders electronically. 

CPOE is designed to streamline workflow, reduce the time between ordering and administering a medication and limit the mistakes that result from hand-written orders.

"Handwritten orders are open to misinterpretation and can cause errors at the ordering, interpreting and transcribing stages of creating an order," according to Island Health.

"An additional benefit is that the information all goes into a database, so it鈥檚 easy to retrieve information about what鈥檚 been done, whether the order was indeed processed and the status of it,鈥� said Lemire-Elmore. "Other providers from elsewhere can access the history, the tests, the treatments, so that people don鈥檛 have to continuously repeat their story."

In the short-term, however, the hospital expects longer wait times as doctors and staff get used to the new system.

鈥淲e expect there to be some slowdowns, we expect there to be some glitches and we鈥檙e prepared to address that,鈥� said Marko Peljhan, Victoria General's vice president of clinical services. "We鈥檙e reducing surgeries and ambulatory volumes starting on Monday just so our staff and physicians have a little bit more time to work with the system." 

Victoria General plans to bring in more staff to help mitigate disruptions. It has also opened a temporary urgent care centre in which doctors will treat folks with less-urgent injuries and ailments to limit emergency department delays.

The Gorge Road Hospital and South Island Surgical Centre will adopt the new system at the same time. The Royal Jubilee Hospital made the change in July.

Lemire-Elmore said that most staff are looking forward to the new system.

鈥淥verall, it鈥檚 excitement, certainly some apprehension. Any major change comes with some risk of unforeseen challenges. What I do know is we're building on the successes of the Jubilee Hospital and also on the lesson they鈥檝e learned," she said. "The majority of the unforeseen problems have come to light and been addressed."