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To configure the settings that determine behavior for the various departments within your facility, you must have level 1 or level 2 access. The only setting that you may configure at the department level is the Favorites setting, which is used to designate the list of commonly-placed orders at each of your facility’s departments.

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Accessing Department Settings

All CPOE settings that you configure at the department level take effect across an entire department of users. Both level 1 and level 2 administrators have access to configure these settings, but level 2 administrators must be granted permission to make configuration changes at the department level. Although these settings affect all users belonging to a particular department, department-level settings can be overriden or supplemented by user- level settings. For example, you can set a user’s favorites list to exclude specific favorites set for his or her department, or to include additional favorites in addition to the favorites set at the department level. For more information, see Creating a Favorites List for Individual Users. To access the department-level CPOE settings:
  1. Click the Admin tab and then the Department tab.
  2. Select the department you want to configure and click the Edit button.
  3. Select CPOE from the Edit Settings drop-down list. The Department Settings screen provides access to all available settings used to configure the selected department. For more information about these settings, see Department Favorites Settings.

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Defining Favorites for Your Departments

Favorites are categorized lists of Order Strings or (in the case of non-medication orders) Order Definitions that provide all of a department’s users with direct access to a smaller group of selected orders in the user interface. You can create Favorites lists to organize frequently-used Order Strings and Order Definitions for each of your departments. For example, you can create a Favorites list that provides all users in a particular department with more direct access to their most commonly-used orders. Before Level 2 administrators can edit Favorites settings for each of their departments, a Level 1 administrator must grant permission to edit this setting. To determine whether you have been granted access, click on the Admin tab and check to ensure that the Administrative Options screen includes a Department tab among the tabs displayed. If this tab is not included among the tabs that you can view, contact your institution-level administrator. To define Favorites for one of your departments:
  1. Click the Admin tab, followed by the Department tab. The list of your available departments displays.
  2. Select the department for which you want to create Favorites, and click the Edit button.
  3. On the Department Settings screen, select CPOE from the Edit Settings drop-down menu.
  4. Click the Edit link associated with the Favorites setting. The Favorites for Department [Department name] screen displays for the specified department.
  5. If the selected department is associated with multiple Facility Groups, select the Facility Group to which you want the department’s favorite order(s) to belong.
  6. On the right-hand side of the screen, click the Edit button associated with the category to which you want to add the Favorites.
  7. Enter one or more search key words into the Search text field. The list of available Order Definitions displays. You can select from an existing Order Definition or Order String, or you can create a new Order String by entering the Order Details needed to add the string as a Favorite. For example, after searching on Advil, we select an Advil PM entry but we create the Favorite by completing the data needed to create the Order String. This data can include the route, dose, and frequency data
  8. Click OK to add the selected Order Definition or Order String to your selected department’s Favorites list. For each additional Order Definition or Order String that you want to add to the selected department’s Favorites list, enter the data necessary to complete the order. Alternatively, you can create one or more categories or sub-categories (by clicking the Add Category button) to organize your Favorites by function. You should use categories if your Favorites list grows large enough to require organization. For more information, see Creating Categories to Contain Favorites.
  9. Click Save, and then Close. The Favorites are added to the Department Pickers category. When users belonging to this department navigate to the Add Order screen to search for or create a new order, they can click the Favorites header to view their department favorites.
Clicking an element on the Favorites list adds the Order String to the user’s New Orders list.
The selection of Favorite orders made available to providers is also determined by the selected patient visit type. Favorite orders do not display to providers during order entry if they belong to Order Sets that have been restricted to other visit types through the Usage setting. For more information, see Restricting Order Sets by Usage Type.

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Creating Categories to Contain Favorites

If each department has a large number of Favorites, you can create categories to organize how Favorites display for users belonging to each of your departments. By logically grouping Favorites by group or function, you can enable users in your departments to easily locate the correct order, especially as your list grows over time. Categories can be created any number of levels under the top-level directory called Department Pickers. As you create categories under this top-level directory, you can created nested categories that serve as sub-categories of other custom (user-created) categories. These sub-categories display as nested folders on the Favorites list on the Add Orders screen. If you create both general Favorites and sub-categories, your users see these general Favorites as “uncategorized” entries that display along with the list of sub-categories that are stored under the top-level Favorites folder. When you encounter any elements named Pickers in the administration interface, remember that the term Picker is simply used to represent either the Favorites or the categories that contain these Favorites on the Add Order page. To add a category to a department’s Favorites list:
  1. Click the Admin tab, followed by the Department tab. The Department Settings screen displays the list of departments.
  2. Select the department for which you want to add the Favorites category and click Edit.
  3. On the Department Settings screen, select CPOE from the Edit Settings drop-down menu.
  4. Click the Edit link associated with the Favorites setting. The Favorites for Department screen displays for the selected department.
  5. If the selected department is associated with multiple Facility Groups, select the Facility Group to which you want the department’s favorite order category to belong.
  6. On the right-hand side of the screen, click the Edit button associated with the category that exists one level above the category that you want to create. The Edit Department Pickers screen displays.
  7. Click the Add Category button and enter the name of the category you want to create into the Add Category dialog box.
  8. Click OK. The new category is added to the Favorites list. It displays as an entry in the Children table on the Edit Department Pickers screen. This table displays all entries (both categories and Favorites) that exist under the top-level entry named Department Pickers. Note that your new category is identified as type subcat, meaning that your new category exists as a sub-category (child) of another category. If you are creating your first category, this category exists as a child of the top-level Department Pickers category.
  9. Click Save. The new category displays under the Department Pickers entry on the Favorites screen. You can add both categories and favorites to this new custom category.

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Department Favorites Settings

The following setting is used to configure CPOE favorites at the department level. This settings is available to level 1 and level 2 administrators only. However, a level 1 administrator must grant permission before level 2 administrators can edit these settings. For information on accessing these settings, see Accessing Department Settings. Favorites This setting provides access to the Pickers interface. In the CPOE application, pickers are used to create Favorites and the categories used to organize them. Administrators can use Favorites to create a list of Order Strings for a specific department or user. The Favorites list displays on the Add Orders screen, and provides users with direct access to their most-frequently used Order Strings.

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Creating Department Favorites Automatically

Rather than defining department favorites manually through configuration of pickers, administrators can automatically create favorite orders for an entire department of users. However, note that Auto-Create does not result in a standard set of favorites that are applied to all users belonging to a department. Instead, the Auto-Create Favorites feature works by generating a set of favorites that is unique to each user belonging to a specific department. These favorites are derived from each provider’s order entry patterns (excluding medication orders). You can use the Auto-Create Favorites feature to automatically generate favorites for one or more of the departments in your facility. The approach taken to create favorites for departments is the same as the approach taken to create favorites for individual users, except for how you configure your user search filters. For more information, see Auto-Creation of Favorites.

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Bulk Configuration of Favorites

Rather than having to create Favorites from scratch for each of your departments, the CPOE interface provides a few different methods for you to configure these settings through bulk configuration. You can create Favorites by copying their associated Pickers between departments You can also delete all Favorites that have been defined for a particular department. All bulk configuration of Favorites is accomplished through procedures that you can follow from the Favorites for Department screen.

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Copying Favorites Between Departments

Many of your settings for Favorites might be common to multiple departments. In such cases, the most efficient way to provision each of your department’s favorite orders is to define the Favorites for one department and then to copy these settings over to other departments, making minor modifications as needed. To Copy Favorites from Another Department:
  1. Click the Admin tab, followed by the Department tab. The list of your available departments displays.
  2. Select the target department of the copy operation, and click the Edit button.
  3. On the Department Settings screen, select CPOE from the Edit Settings drop-down menu.
  4. Click the Edit link associated with the Favorites setting. The Favorites for Department [ dept name ] screen displays all existing Favorites that have been defined for the selected (target) department.
  5. If the selected department is associated with multiple Facility Groups, select the Facility Group associated with the source department and category containing the Favorites you want to copy.
  6. Click the Copy From Department button, and use the drop-down menu provided to select the source department and category that has the Favorites you want to copy.
  7. Click OK.
  8. Enter a name for the new category and select the category into which you want to add the Favorites, and click OK. The Favorites are copied to the selected (target) department, and are organized under the new category.
  9. Click Close to return to the Department Settings screen, then Save to save your changes.

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Deleting All Favorites from a Department

The bulk delete operation affects all Favorites that belong to a department. To restrict the delete operation to one or more categories within your Favorites list, you must delete the individual categories from their parent directory. To delete all of the Favorites for a department:
  1. Click the Admin tab, followed by the Department tab. The list of your available departments displays.
  2. Select the department that uses the Favorites you want to delete and click the Edit button.
  3. On the Department Settings screen, select CPOE from the Edit Settings drop-down menu.
  4. Click the Edit link associated with the Favorites setting. The Department Pickers screen displays all existing Favorites for the selected department.
  5. If the selected department is associated with multiple Facility Groups, select the Facility Group with the department that has the favorite orders you want to delete.
  6. Click the Delete All Pickers button. You are prompted to confirm the delete operation.
  7. Click Yes to confirm that you want to proceed. All Favorites are deleted from the selected department.