Issue:
A healthcare crisis in the making

In the last 50 years, as hospitals and health systems have grown in complexity and capability, demand for nursing services has increased steadily. At the same time, the medical profession expanded its educational, research and operational sophistication. “The model of nursing practice, however, did not change.” ¹

Experts observe that the current and looming crisis differs from past shortages in kind and severity.² One estimate predicts that American healthcare will experience a shortfall of 500,000 nurses by 2020.³ Regardless of causes—generational change, demographic shifts, economic trends and other persistent forces—resolution will require a range of remedies.

Solution:
Nursing efficiency and job satisfaction

As one of the most commonly proposed responses, advocates encourage organizations to provide nurses with the tools they need to re-focus their work on the skills and talents they possess. With state-of-the-market patient information management tools, for example, nurses can both accomplish more and raise their level of job satisfaction.

“While the burden of care increased, work-saving technologies that could ease the multitude of routine tasks for nurses have not been implemented, adding to nurses’ dissatisfaction. At the same time, health care organizations face increased regulation and documentation, taking nurses away from patient care.” ⁴ Hospitals, health systems and ambulatory care practices can use specialized “work-saving” solutions to maintain efficient, effective clinical environments that are conducive to proficiency and accuracy:

• Automate nurses’ charting processes. The bulk of the data that comprises the patient record is generated in nurse-oriented charting activities. Helping nurses focus more on care and less on data entry, basic calculations, searching for files, and other repetitive administrative tasks is fundamental to gaining productivity.
  
  
• Empower the nursing staff. Powerful information management tools have the effect of elevating nurses’ work. In turn, nurses focus on the more rewarding, clinical side of care. And in nursing, job satisfaction can give hospitals a competitive advantage. A medical director at a major health system explains his experience with CliniComp documentation systems: “Our ICU nurses practically demand it. They consider it a valuable and essential tool. That’s one reason why our nursing staff turnover rates are well below half the statewide average.” ⁵
  
  
• Focus on quality. The same information systems that will help nurses do more in less time will also help them do it right. These enterprise-wide data tools promote clinical collaboration and deliver a more comprehensive view of patients’ status. The impact comes through at the bedside. “Making timely information available to nurses supports high-quality, knowledge-driven care, as well as efficiency.” ⁶

CliniComp Essentris™ advantage:
Smarter clinician documentation for re-engineered workflow productivity

Fast, integrated nursing documentation. With Essentris™, nurses input, edit, and access patient chart data simply and quickly. Nurses—and physicians—gain integrated access to readings, orders, results, and other data from a limitless range of systems including physiological monitors, devices, ADT systems, lab results and thousands of hospital-based systems.

• Automated clinical alerts and calculations. Essentris transforms your processes with precise patient monitoring, timely clinical alerts and reminders, automated clinical calculations and tasks list generation, online reference capabilities, and plan of care tools.
  
  
• Configurable data presentation and visualization. A highly configurable platform, Essentris offers: flow sheets that easily capture and present common patient data types; clinical notes that can be customized to adapt to your workflow; and, summary screens that present lists, tables and graphs according to the needs of your clinical specialty.

Enterprise-wide medical record access. Essentris forms the basis for a longitudinal, enterprise-wide medical record system that manages and tracks medications, procedures, physiologic monitor readings, progress notes, and other charted information while supporting order entry, decision support, outcomes measurement, reporting, analysis and other key functions.

¹ Health Care’s Human Crisis: The American Nursing Shortage. Kimball, B.; O’Neil, E. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Special Report, April 2002.

² Health Care’s Human Crisis: The American Nursing Shortage. Kimball, B.; O’Neil, E. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Special Report, April 2002.

³ The Nursing Shortage: Can Technology Help? Case, J.; Mowry, M; Welebob, E. California HealthCare Foundation/First Consulting Group, 2002.

⁴ Health Care’s Human Crisis: The American Nursing Shortage. Kimball, B.; O’Neil, E. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Special Report, April 2002.

⁵ CliniComp direct communication.

⁶ The Nursing Shortage: Can Technology Help? Case, J.; Mowry, M; Welebob, E. California HealthCare Foundation/First Consulting Group, 2002.

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