title: A computerized aid to support smoking cessation treatment for hospital patients.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Hospital-based interventions promote smoking cessation after discharge. Strategies to deliver these interventions are needed, especially now that providing smoking cessation advice or treatment, or both, to inpatient smokers is a publicly reported quality-of-care measure for US hospitals.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To assess the effect of adding a tobacco order set to an existing computerized order-entry system used to admit Medicine patients to 1 hospital.
  
  
  METHODS
  Pre-post study.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Proportion of admitted patients who had smoking status identified, a smoking counselor consulted, or nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) ordered during 4 months before and after the change. In 4 months after implementation, the order set was used with 76% of Medicine admissions, and a known smoking status was recorded for 81% of these patients. The intervention increased the proportion of admitted patients who were referred for smoking counseling (0.8 to 2.1%) and had NRT ordered (1.6 to 2.5%) (p < .0001 for both). Concomitantly, the hospital's performance on the smoking cessation quality measure improved.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Adding a brief tobacco order set to an existing computerized order-entry system increased a hospital's provision of evidence-based tobacco treatment and helped to improve its performance on a publicly reported quality measure. It provides a model for US hospitals seeking to improve their quality of care for inpatients.
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. kkoplan@partners.org
authors.forename: Kate E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Koplan
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Regan
authors.forename: Robert C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Goldszer
authors.forename: Louise I
authors.initials: LI
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: Nancy A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Rigotti
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000379:methods*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014584:User-Computer Interface