Ambulatory computerized physician order entry implementation.

As part of broader effort to identify success factors for implementing computerized physician order entry(CPOE), factors specific to the ambulatory setting were investigated in the field at Kaiser Permanente Northwest. A multidisciplinary team of five qualitative researchers spent seven months at four clinics conducting observations, interviews, and focus groups. The team analyzed the data using a combination of template and grounded theory approaches. The result is a description of fourteen themes, clustered into technology, organizational,personal, and environmental categories. While similar to inpatient study results in many respects,this outpatient CPO investigation generated subtly different themes.