Doctor’s Orders

Kathrynn Schmidt discusses the U-M CareLink system with Pam Manee, a nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Photo: Scott Galvin

Nurses in the Health System’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) used to spend a lot of time “hunting and gathering,” says Kathrynn Schmidt, who used to work as a clinical nurse in the unit. Tracking down patient charts and processing hand-written, and sometimes illegible, physician orders was a regular part of a nurse’s day. But that was before UM-CareLink.

UM-CareLink is a new computerized provider order entry system designed to improve the quality and safety of inpatient care in the Health System. Implementation of the new system began in 2006, and it is now up and running in ob/gyn, Women’s Hospital and Mott Children’s Hospital.

The system allows physicians to order tests, procedures and medications online from any computer, eliminating the need for paper forms. Nurses can access test results and enter information on a laptop computer next to each patient’s bedside.

“Everybody has access to the same information at the same time from anywhere,” Schmidt says. “There’s no more searching for charts and no more tracking down physicians to double-check their handwriting. Electronic orders go directly to the pharmacy or the lab, so the turnaround time is much quicker.”

One year before the transition to UM-CareLink, Schmidt was asked to serve as the liaison between the NICU nursing staff and the Orders Management Project design team. “It was a big change,” Schmidt says. “Some of our nurses had used the old paper system for 30 years. Just getting comfortable with the computer was a big learning curve. But in the end, our nursing staff agreed they would never go back to paper.”

UM-CareLink is scheduled to “go live” in University Hospital and the Cardiovascular Center in April 2008.

—Sally Pobojewski