NURS 6051 Impact of Nursing Informatics on Patient Outcomes and Patient Care Efficiencies

NURS 6051 Impact of Nursing Informatics on Patient Outcomes and Patient Care Efficiencies

 

The American Nurses Association (ANA) defines nursing informatics as a nursing specialty that consolidates nursing science with multiple data and analytical sciences. Informatics facilitates the process of identifying, defining, managing, and conveying information and knowledge in nursing practice (Kassam, Nagle & Strudwick, 2017). Nursing informatics work with a diverse group of professionals across the care continuum to bridge the gap between healthcare’s clinical and technical aspects. This paper will discuss a nursing informatics project that I advocate to improve patient outcomes and patient-care efficiency in my organization and how the project will achieve these goals.

The Proposed Project

My proposed nursing informatics project for the organization is developing a patient portal. A patient portal is a secure online website that offers patients convenient access to their health information using an Internet connection. A patient is provided a secure username and password to access the portal. Developing a patient portal improves patient care efficiencies as patients can easily access their medical information including, Medical history, clinical summaries, medication lists, diagnostic results, and prescription renewals (Sieck, Hefner & McAlearney, 2018). Besides, the patient portal features allow patients to pay their medical bills online, update demographic information, and make appointment requests and reminders. The portal also has secure messaging that is HIPAA-compliant and supports communication between patients and their primary care providers (PCPs) (Sieck et al., 2018). This can significantly ease patient care as patients can consult their PCP from home and save them the frequent visits to the hospital. Furthermore, the portal has a feature of patient educational materials, which allow patients to view health education materials. The feature can help increase health promotion practices among patients and improve health outcomes.

The Stakeholders Impacted By This Project

The patient portal project will impact internal stakeholders such as healthcare providers and external stakeholders such as patients and insurance providers. Healthcare providers, including nurses, physicians, and nurse practitioners, will be positively impacted by the patient portal, which improves the efficiency of patient care and streamlining workflow. According to Zhong et al. (2018), implementing a patient portal in healthcare organizations increases health providers’ efficiency by facilitating effective communication between the PCP and patients. Patients can also register themselves on the portal by entering their details electronically, which eliminates formation and reduces the errors that arise when handling a patient’s medical history manually (Dendere et al., 2019). Additionally, the portal streamlines providers’ workflow through online appointment scheduling and secure messaging, which patients can use for urgent consultations rather than visiting the physician physically.

The patient portal will significantly impact patients since the primary goal is to improve their care and health outcomes. A study by Sorondo et al. (2016) found that having access to patient portals can increase access to health providers and data, contributing to improvements in patients’ functional status and reducing healthcare costs. Patients with chronic illnesses, including geriatrics and their caregivers, may benefit more from using the portal technology than others since they are the highest healthcare consumers. Sorondo et al. (2016) argue that patient portals can facilitate care coordination programs to enhance patients’ self-management and care. Insurers will also be positively impacted since the portal allows patients to pay for the services they have utilized through a secured online platform. Patients can also change their insurance details and access their billing information seamlessly.

Click here to ORDER an A++ paper from our Verified MASTERS and DOCTORATE WRITERS: THE IMPACT OF NURSING INFORMATICS ON PATIENT OUTCOMES AND PATIENT CARE EFFICIENCIES NURS 6051

Patient Outcomes or Patient-Care Efficiencies This Project Is Aimed At Improving

The patient portal project aims at improving health outcomes and increasing care efficiency for patients with chronic illnesses and on long-term follow-up. According to Sorondo et al. (2016), integrating healthcare information technology in care coordination can improve health care by increasing patients’ self-efficacy for managing their disease, improving health outcomes, reducing unnecessary health care visits, and reducing administrative costs and time for health providers. The project also aims to improve care coordination for patients with chronic illness on coordinated care. Informatics can improve outcomes for chronic conditions patients by increasing access to primary care and care coordination provided through patient portals and can assist care coordination as a sustainable resource (Dendere et al., 2019). The project will improve care coordination by exchanging information between health providers, patients, and their caregivers. Besides, patient portals have screening and decision tools that can support improving care coordination.

The project also aims at increasing patient engagement by improving their knowledge, skills, ability, and readiness to manage their health and care using interventions tailored to foster positive patient behaviors. Patient engagement will be achieved by the portal allowing patients access their health records, book their clinic appointments, consult their PCPs electronically, and access health education materials. Zhong et al. (2018) hypothesize that patients with access to their medical information become more educated healthcare consumers and are better informed to ultimately employ self-management interventions, thus reducing healthcare costs and healthcare costs. For instance, the engagement of patients with cardiovascular diseases will be increased by allowing them to access their medical history and diagnostic results and accessing education materials on self-care (Dendere et al., 2019). Consequently, they will monitor their progress and modify their lifestyle to improve health outcomes.

Technologies Required To Implement This Project 

The patient portal will require a wide range of technology features to ease its implementation. The portal will need a profile creation feature that will enable patients and providers to effortlessly register themselves on the portal by entering their personal and demographic information (Sieck et al., 2018). It will also require an information access feature, which will enable patients to access all their health information like diagnostic and lab reports and prescriptions. Besides, the portal will require a scheduled appointment feature where clients can make an appointment with their PCPs using the robust feature (Sieck et al., 2018). It will also need a feature for messaging options, which will allow patients to communicate and consult their PCPs electronically.

The patient portal will require a Real-time notifications feature, which will allow the administrator to send updates and vital information about the website to its users in real-time. Third-party integrations will be required to facilitate integrating other essential software applications like EHR software and telemedicine apps in the patient portal software (Sieck et al., 2018). An online payments feature will also be needed to implement the patient portal to allow clients to pay for healthcare services through an online-secured platform that uses digital payment methods. Furthermore, the portal will require a feature for digital registration forms, which the clients can fill online and even download the form (Sieck et al., 2018). Lastly, security tools and systems will be needed to secure the patient portal website from malware attacks and hackers and protect patient data.

The Project Team and How I Would Incorporate the Nurse Informaticist in the Project Team

The project team will include a project manager, website developer, and one member from the departments that will be directly affected by the portal’s implementation, including operations, front-line, clinical, and health informatics. The project manager will be tasked with managing the project daily and coordinating the activities documented in the project plan.

Besides, the project manager will lead the team in developing a project charter, including key elements that will guide the implementation of the project. The website developer will be tasked with designing the patient portal, installing the portal’s technological features, and developing a friendly user interface that eases access to the portal. The departmental members will represent their department or clinic location and learn operations and workflows. They will also facilitate communication between the project team and their department. I would incorporate a nurse informaticist in the project by inviting them to act as a consultant to the team, especially on essential features, which should be incorporated into the portal to help achieve the project’s goals (Kassam et al., 2017). The nurse informaticist will also evaluate the patient portal to assess whether it has complied with HIPAA and HITECH regulations.

Conclusion

The proposed nursing informatics project is designing and implementing a patient portal to allow access of patients’ to their medical information and facilitate communication with their PCPs. The patient portal’s goals are to improve patient outcomes, increase efficiency in patient care, streamline health providers’ workflow, and increase patient engagement. The project mostly targets patients with chronic illnesses who are the highest healthcare consumers and often require coordinated care. The portal will seek to increase access to providers and data to improve their functional status and lower healthcare costs. The portal will also enable patients to access health education materials, improving their self-care, and promoting lifestyle modification. The project team will include a project manager, website developer, nurse informaticist, and members from departments directly impacted by the patient portal.

References

Dendere, R., Slade, C., Burton-Jones, A., Sullivan, C., Staib, A., & Janda, M. (2019). Patient Portals Facilitating Engagement with Inpatient Electronic Medical Records: A Systematic Review. Journal of medical Internet research, 21(4), e12779. https://doi.org/10.2196/12779

Kassam, I., Nagle, L., & Strudwick, G. (2017). Informatics competencies for nurse leaders: protocol for a scoping review. BMJ Open, 7(12), e018855. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-018855

Sieck, C. J., Hefner, J. L., & McAlearney, A. S. (2018). Improving the patient experience through patient portals: Insights from experienced portal users. Patient Experience Journal, 5(3), 47-54. https://pxjournal.org/journal/vol5/iss3/8

Sorondo, B., Allen, A., Fathima, S., Bayleran, J., & Sabbagh, I. (2016). Patient portal is a tool for enhancing the patient experience and improving the quality of care in primary care practices. Egems, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.13063/2327-9214.1262

Zhong, X., Liang, M., Sanchez, R., Yu, M., Budd, P. R., Sprague, J. L., & Dewar, M. A. (2018). On the electronic patient portal’s effect on primary care utilization and appointment adherence. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 18(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0669-8

 Impact of Nursing Informatics on Patient Outcomes and Patient Care Efficiencies

Nursing informatics is today a core aspect of nursing professional activities and processes. In their paper, Al Najjar et al. (2022) assert that nursing informatics reinforces nursing through the provision of standard language systems, decision-making support, improved application of technology, and better interactions among patients and clinical professionals. The purpose of this paper is to propose an informatics program or initiative to the organizational leadership to improve patient outcomes and patient care efficiencies in the facility as well as patient care experience.

Description of the Proposed Project

The need to improve care provision implores nurses to consider a host of approaches leveraging technologies in their practice settings. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in nursing is still relatively low yet it can offer increased benefits in improving efficiencies in patient care and outcomes. An important part of AI for nursing is predictive analytics which allows nurses to discover previously unknown patterns in different sources of clinical and operational data that can help them make better decisions (Booth et al., 2021). Using predictive analytics can help nurses to attain actionable insights that lead to greater accuracy, and timely yet appropriate interventions in a prescriptive manner for both patients and operational efficiencies.

In this case, the proposed project is syndromic surveillance that leverages both predictive analytics and EHRs alerts. While patient alerts lead to nurse fatigue, the proposed project will not rely on alerts alone but incorporate predictive analytics as a component of artificial intelligence (AI) (Carroll,2018). Real-time surveillance of patients can help identify possible adverse effects immediately. Instantaneous clinical decision support tools then take the analyzed surveillance and apply it within the shortest time to signal nurses to take immediate or precautionary measures or steps (Glassman, 2018). Poor usability, alert fatigue, and understanding of the program by different end-users have impacted the execution of real-time decision support tools. However, using predictive analytics algorithms and the optimization of EHR alerts will improve to ensure that syndromic surveillance improves patient outcomes in any healthcare setting.

Stakeholders Impacted by the Project

The implementation of this project will impact a host of stakeholders. Key among these include nurses, patients, their families, healthcare systems, and physicians. In their article, Schwalbe et al. (2018) assert that healthcare project stakeholders include sponsors, project managers, project teams, support staff, and regulatory entities. They also include third parties and critics of the project. In this proposed project, the project manager, the sponsor, and the team will be stakeholders as they will be directly involved in project development, implementation, and coordination. Secondly, nurses, nurse managers and leaders, support staff, and other healthcare personnel will be impacted since they will use the outcome of the syndromic surveillance to implement interventions for identified patients in their clinical practice. Patients as stakeholders will attain better outcomes through the reduction of the possibility of adverse events.

The regulatory bodies and the third parties, especially system vendors and developers, will ensure that the project’s implementation does not violate any regulations and complies with data protection and privacy laws like HIPAA and HITECH (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2022). The technology should also not be harmful to patients. Third parties like insurance organizations and even the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will be influenced as the initiative is aimed at reducing the overall cost of care through improved efficiencies and patient-quality care outcomes. The entire practice facility or healthcare organization is also a stakeholder as the project should align with its overall goals, strategy, and culture based on the mission and vision statements.

Patient Outcomes or Patient Care Efficiencies

The core aspect of any health improvement project or initiative is to enhance patient outcomes through the quality of care and enhancing efficiencies in processes. In their paper, Booth et al. (2021) implore nurses and healthcare providers as well as organizations to adopt informatics and other forms of healthcare technologies to improve patient outcomes and efficiencies in their processes. Therefore, the benefits of this initiative are immense for patients, nurses, and the healthcare system.

The use of syndromic surveillance that leverages predictive analytics and EHR alerts will lead to better patient outcomes. According to a study by Ageron et al. (2021), syndromic surveillance allows providers and public health systems to detect and monitor the occurrence of symptoms and other adverse events that may occur to patients. Using the tool, the article explores how healthcare providers leveraged the tool to predict hospital resource needs to counter the COVID-19 outbreak in Switzerland. The study notes that using the tool, public health providers and other healthcare professionals could predict and anticipate intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy by 13 days, including substantial aberration detection when the second wave occurred. The implication is that this tool will help improve the clinical decision-support abilities of nurses to offer interventions once they receive EHR alerts.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asserts that syndromic surveillance offers healthcare professional a timely system that detects, understands, and monitor health events (Yoon et al., 2018). The system emphasizes the application of real-time pre-diagnostic data by tracking patients’ symptoms, right from the emergency department. The implication is that the implementation of the proposed solution will improve care coordination and allow nurses and other providers to support patient needs. Therefore, it will improve coordination which will enhance efficiency and overall patient outcomes.

Technologies Needed in Implementing the Project

 The primary technology required in this project is artificial intelligence, especially predictive analytics and syndromic surveillance components as well as machine learning. Predictive analytics studies huge amounts of data to get indications of common symptoms, diagnoses, workflows, and other outcomes. The algorithms in predictive analytics use artificial intelligence aspects to get insight into the collected data and provide clinical decision support tools for nurses and other healthcare providers (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2022). The next technology required in this project is electronic health records (EHR) and their associated alerts. The project will leverage these technologies to develop a syndromic surveillance system to help nurses analyze patient symptoms and identify possible adverse events and make better clinical decisions.

Project Team

The project team is part of the stakeholders charged with the responsibility of planning and executing or implementing the project. The team will comprise the project sponsor, the project manager, nurse informaticists, third-party software vendors, and the financial manager. The project sponsor will be the main team member whose role will entail offering support and resources for the successful implementation of the project. The project sponsor will also ensure effective coordination and liaison with the management, especially the administrative and financial departments. The Health Information systems director will play this role (Ronquillo et al., 2021). The project manager will be the nurse manager whose main duty will be to oversight the overall implementation and coordinate the team comprising all experts and nurses. The project manager will provide weekly reports and identify areas that need improvement. The project manager will ensure that the project is completed based on the times to avoid any project creep.

Healthcare project teams should include medical experts who ensure that such initiatives are consistent with the best practices and do not harm patients (Schwalbe & Furlong, 2018). Because this project aims to enhance surveillance to improve clinical decision support, nurses and clinicians will be included. Their role would be to determine if the retrieved data provide sufficient details and can be used to identify symptoms, especially among patients at elevated risks from their disease conditions.

The informatics nurse will be a critical member of the project team and will implement the identified technologies in the healthcare practice. The informatics nurse will also evaluate the success of the project to determine if it is user-friendly and allows patients to make better clinical support decisions. The nurse informaticist will also collect information from nurses on what should be incorporated into the new system based on the organizational and practice requirements. Clinical data can only be meaningful if it is captured correctly by nurses (Hughes et al., 2020). Therefore, the nurse informaticist will also educate nurses and physicians on how to use the system and in daily operations in the facility. The informaticist will ensure that all nurses’ preferences are integrated into the system to help them attain set goals. The system vendor will also be a core part of the team with the role of providing the requisite system and its components. The vendor will install the system, and collaborate with the project manager and the nurse informatics to ensure that it meets the expected organizational functionalities.

Conclusion

The proposed project entails establishing a syndromic surveillance system to reduce adverse events by leveraging predictive analytics as a component of artificial intelligence and electronic health records (EHRs) alerts. The project will improve patient outcomes as well as organizational efficiencies by helping providers to make better clinical decisions. The project is critical in improving patient safety and ensuring that providers offer the best approach to patient needs. 

References

Ageron, F. X., Hugli, O., Dami, F., Caillet-Bois, D., Pittet, V., Eckert, P., … & Carron, P. N.

(2022). Lessons from COVID-19 syndromic surveillance through emergency department activity: a prospective time series study from western Switzerland. BMJ open, 12(5), e054504. DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-054504.

Al Najjar, R. I., & Shafie, Z. M. (2022). Impact of Nursing Informatics on the Quality of Patient

Care. International Journal of Medical Science and Clinical Research Studies, 2(5), 418-421. DOI: https://doi.org/10.47191/ijms crs/v2-i5-19,

Booth, R. G., Strudwick, G., McBride, S., O’Connor, S., & López, A. L. S. (2021). How the

nursing profession should adapt for a digital future. BMJ, 373. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-054504

Carroll, W. (2018). Artificial intelligence, nurses, and the quadruple aim. Online Journal of

            Nursing Informatics, 22(2). http://www.himss.org/ojn

Glassman, K. S. (2018). Using data in nursing practice. American Nurse Today, 12(11), 45–47.

                https://www.myamericannurse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ant11-Data-1030.pdf

Hughes, H. E., Edeghere, O., O’Brien, S. J., Vivancos, R., & Elliot, A. J. (2020). Emergency

department syndromic surveillance systems: a systematic review. BMC Public Health, 20(1), 1-15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09949-y

McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2022). Nursing informatics and the foundation of

            knowledge (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning

Ronquillo, C. E., Peltonen, L. M., Pruinelli, L., Chu, C. H., Bakken, S., Beduschi, A., … &

Topaz, M. (2021). Artificial intelligence in nursing: Priorities and opportunities from an international invitational thinkâ€tank of the Nursing and Artificial Intelligence Leadership Collaborative. Journal of advanced nursing, 77(9), 3707-3717. DOI: 10.1111/jan.14855

Schwalbe, K., & Furlong, D. (2018). Healthcare project management (2nd ed.). Schwalbe

            Publishing.

Yoon, P. W., Ising, A. I., & Gunn, J. E. (2018). Using syndromic surveillance for all-hazards

public health surveillance: successes, challenges, and the future. Public Health Reports, 132(1_suppl), 3S-6S. DOI: 10.1177/0033354917708995

Nursing informatics plays a critical role in the transformation of healthcare today, especially through efficient delivery of patient care. Informatics combines nursing science with multiple fields like information science and technology to enhance patient care outcomes. Through the use of electronic health records, clinical decision support systems and other health information technologies, nursing informatics supports the nursing practices and improves patient outcomes (Feldman et al., 2018). The role of nursing informatics in the transformation of health care is to ensure that nurses and other providers utilize the best possible tools so that patients get effective and efficient care (Farokhzadian et al., 2020). The purpose of this paper is to describe a proposed informatics project for the organization aimed at improving patient experience, workforce efficiency, and result in more positive cases of patient outcomes.  

Proposed Informatics Project

Knowledge and awareness about the effects of nursing informatics on efficient and effective service delivery is essential to ascertaining quality patient outcomes. Nursing informatics is one way of enhancing patient care efficiency and improvement of the overall care delivery and processes within a healthcare organization or setting. The proposed nursing informatics project in this case is having an integrated system that focuses on educating and training all nurses on informatics. The project will focus on different components of nursing informatics and associated technologies like electronic health records (EHRs), and clinical decision support system (CDSS) among others (Huter et al., 2020). Nurses should be equipped with advanced levels of informatics competency so as to implement evidence-based patient-centered care. Not all nurses are vast and conversant with advanced nursing informatics. Therefore, creating educational learning programs through an integrated program is essential as it will assist them have better ways of using health information technologies (HIT) to enhance efficiencies in patient care and eventually improve their outcomes.

The integrated training program will ensure that nurses have sufficient knowledge in nursing informatics and associated technologies like wearable devices and artificial intelligence (Feldman et al., 2018). Through the training and implementation of the integrated system, the facility will handle and coordinate different healthcare aspects like patient data, training of new nurses, allocation of resources, help in decision-making process and develop performance reports where necessary to improve healthcare management. Through nursing informatics system, nurses will manage patient better and reduce errors and never events.

Stakeholders Impacted by the Project

Projects influence and impact diverse stakeholders based on the roles that they play in organizations. Stakeholders are both internal and external. While the project is mainly targeted at the internal stakeholders, it also affects the external ones like patients and their families since its focus is to enhance efficiency and effective provision of care to patients. Health