Case Study: Massachusetts General Hospital achieves reduced medication errors and significant cost savings with InterSystems' Caché-based POE system

Massachusetts General’s POE system offers return on investment that is priceless

Massachusetts General Hospital, part of the Partners HealthCare System, faced a critical patient-safety and operational challenge: how to reliably track and manage clinician orders when multiple physicians and technicians treat the same patient. Duplicate medications, dangerous drug or food interactions, and missed allergy alerts threatened care quality, while clinicians expected a modern, high‑performance, scalable IT solution.

The hospital implemented a Caché-based Provider Order Entry (POE) system — a web-enabled, Windows server application that serves about 2,400 users and processes roughly 5,500 orders per day. POE automates medication, lab, nutrition and procedure orders; screens for duplicates and interactions; recommends cost-effective alternatives; and provides secure access controls and audit trails to meet HIPAA and JCAHO requirements. The system improved patient safety (similar implementations cut serious medication errors by 55%), reduced costs, increased availability and delivers a clear return on investment.

Massachusetts General Hospital

John Glaser

Vice President and CIO, Partners HealthCare Systems