Measuring Capacity to Care Using Nursing Data

by Evelyn Hovenga, Cherrie Lowe RN, RM, Dip Teaching (Nursing), PG Dip, Hospital Admin, AFACHM, MACN

Overview

Measuring Capacity to Care Using Nursing Data presents evidence-based solutions regarding the adoption of safe staffing principles and the optimum use of operational data to enable health service delivery strategies that result in improved patient and organizational outcomes. Readers will learn how to make better use of informatics to collect, share, link and process data collected operationally for the purpose of providing real-time information to decision- makers. The book discusses topics such as dynamic health care environments, health care operational inefficiencies and costly events, how to measure nursing care demand, nursing models of care, data quality and governance, and big data.

The content of the book is a valuable source for graduate students in informatics, nurses, nursing managers and several members involved in health care who are interested in learning more about the beneficial use of informatics for improving their services.

• Presents and discusses evidences from real-world case studies from multiple countries
• Provides detailed insights of health system complexity in order to improve decision- making
• Demonstrates the link between nursing data and its use for efficient and effective healthcare service management
• Discusses several limitations currently experienced and their impact on health service delivery

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780128169780
Publisher:	Elsevier Science
Publication date:	03/13/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	498
File size:	24 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Evelyn Hovenga, RN, PhD, FACS, FANC, FIAHSI, currently manages eHealth Education, an RTO, and the not-for-profit Global eHealth Collaborative (GeHCo) and continues to work as a digital health consultant. She retired as Professor of Health Informatics in 2007, following a 25-year career in this discipline with a focus on standards development as these apply to EHRs, semantic interoperability, and terminology and is Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education, University College London (http://www.chime.ucl.ac.uk/). Evelyn started her career as a registered nurse; has health executive, public service, educational and research experience; obtained a PhD in Health Administration (Nursing Informatics); initiated and hosted the first National Health Informatics Conference (HIC) in Melbourne in 1993; is one of the founders of HISA and the Australasian College of Health Informatics; and is a founding fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (FIAHSI), Geneva. She is also widely published. Evelyn is an honorary member of the International Medical Informatics Association’s Nursing Informatics SIG as a result of representing Australian nurses from 1984 for many years, as a member and Past Chair of this group.
Cherrie Lowe is a registered nurse, midwife, an innovator and business manager, who brings
local, national and international health service executive management, research, software
development and system implementation experiences. Her health industry experience includes
past roles as a Nurse Educator, Quality Manager, Director of Nursing, Director of Clinical
Services, hospital accreditation surveyor and medico-legal expert witness.

Her executive level industry experience began as a Director of Nursing for Mercy Health and
Aged Care where she maintained an efficient nursing service and improved the hospital’s profit
margin assisted by making use of her patient acuity system. Cherrie initiated the development
of a hospital promotion campaign, complete with television video that significantly increased
the hospital’s bed occupancy. The success of this campaign achieved the Australian Council on
Healthcare Standards (ACHS) quality award for large hospitals.

As Director of Clinical Services for Ramsay Health Care she played a major role in managing
the transition of a large Commonwealth funded veteran hospital to Australia’s largest private
hospital where she developed a strong, efficient and dynamic nursing service and allied health
team. Cherrie assisted in the expansion of clinical services, including: Cardiac, Gynaecology
and Neurosurgery. She again achieved the ACHS Quality Award for large hospitals and the
hospital was also awarded the Employer of the Year Award for large organizations in Brisbane.
Cherrie was again responsible for generating a significant profit margin for that organisation by
maintaining a high level of efficiency in clinical services, an achievement made possible
through the use of her patient acuity system.

During her years as a nurse executive, Cherrie managed her family, undertook her post graduate
studies as an external student, was a surveyor for the Australian Health Care Council, developed,
tested andmade use of a patient acuity system, and undertook various consultancies. She partnered
in business with a software developer and her system was fully computerized taking advantage of
ongoing technical developments. Cherrie shared her research findings with other Directors of
Nursing who then worked with her by facilitating ongoing research and development activities in
their facilities. This research was presented at a world informatics conference in San Antonio in
1994. During the mid 1990s both Cherrie’s and Evelyn’s patient acuity systems were used by
numerous Queensland hospitals. The Queensland Government funded a validation study enabling
a comparison to be made between these two systems using the same patient populations which
validated both systems, as the use of their systems provided comparable results.

The success of Cherrie’s automated and highly interoperable TrendCare system led her to
assume the CEO, researcher and developer role on a full-time basis. Her primary focus has
always been to take on the many ensuing challenges to benefit the nursing and midwifery
professions As recognition Cherrie received a Nursing Excellence award from the Royal
College of Nursing for her contribution to nursing in Australia.

Developing and continuously improving the reliability of an evidence based patient acuity
and workload management system for nursing and midwifery has been a challenging
undertaking, and during the past 25 years Cherrie has had to overcome many barriers.
These include (1) convincing nursing and midwifery leaders, colleges and unions that nursing
services need to collect and present their own evidence of nursing demand in order for
nursing services to be adequately resourced, (2) convincing health service senior executives,
including CEO’s, finance managers and chief information officers of the methodologies that
are best suited to measuring nursing demand and the value of nursing demand measurements
for effective budget management and accurate costings of episodes of care, (3) Convincing
nurses and midwives generally of the importance of collecting nursing and midwifery data so
that safe staffing and fair workloads can be a reality. These barriers have been overcome in
some countries but are still ongoing in others.
Developing a viable small business, while trying to provide an affordable software product to
health services that are financially stretched, has tested Cherrie’s business skills. Transforming
a small local business to an international business with a customer footprint across six countries
in the health care environment is testament to her determination, commitment and sound business strategies.

Cherrie has won the AustCham Business Award in Singapore, the Australian national and
state Microsoft eHealth iAwards for innovation in IT development and the Australian national
ICT exporter of the Year Award.

Table of Contents

1. Dynamic Health Care Environments2. Operational Inefficiencies3. Measuring Nursing Care Demand4. Measuring Nursing Work5. Identifying Skill Mix Needs6. Nursing Models of Care7. Staffing Resource Management8. Workforce Planning9. Digital Health Ecosystems10. Digital transformation strategy11. Measuring Health Service Quality12. Residential - Community Aged Care Management13. Current and Future Vision

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Evidence-based solutions on the adoption of safe staffing principles and optimum use of operational information in healthcare using big data

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Dennis W Cook, PhD, MSN, FACHE, NEA-BC(CHRISTUS Health)
Description: The book covers the use of data across the nursing spectrum. There is a significant focus on midwifery. Figures and tables are used to supplement the topic of discussion within each chapter.
Purpose: The purpose of the book is to address the need for a better understanding of contributions made by the nursing and midwifery professions to the health of any nation. The objectives are supported by the authors' desire to provide for a better understanding of nursing and midwifery data. The objective is worthy because there is a need for understanding how nursing data can be used to facilitate evidence-based practice. The book meets the objectives by breaking down nursing practice into operational segments and then discussing how data is utilized within each segment.
Audience: The book is written for a broad audience of healthcare professionals who work with nursing data. The book appears to meet the needs of the intended audience. One author is a nurse with a PhD in health administration. The co-author is a nurse by trade and owner/CEO of a healthcare software company who also has experience in healthcare clinical and leadership roles. It appears that the authors are credible subject matter experts.
Features: The book provides guidance on measures of care processes and outcomes using tried and true quality methods. It also gives information on the use of various types of datasets, including big data. The book also provides nursing operations foundational information.
Assessment: The book has relevant information to help guide the utilization and application of nursing data. It does have a periodic focus on midwifery but is useful across the nursing spectrum.

Doody's Review Service

"The book has relevant information to help guide the utilization and application of nursing data. It does have a periodic focus on midwifery but is useful across the nursing spectrum." —Doody

From the Publisher