The Benefits of an Acuity-Driven Nursing Workload Solution: Part 4 – Standardized and Validated Tool to Measure, Compare, and Benchmark Patient Acuity
Approaching patient acuity comes with many challenges. A primary one being how to accurately measure workload for diverse patient populations. Within the four walls of a hospital, hundreds of different disease processes are managed by skilled nursing staff, knowledgeable physicians and ancillary staff who ensure optimal patient care. Having such an assortment of conditions makes measuring the workload complicated. How can a tool compare a stroke patient that needs assistance with all of their activities of daily living to a patient suffering from sepsis? How can a post open-heart patient be compared to a patient with a recent total hip replacement?
That’s where an acuity tool that is standardized and comprehensive comes in and delivers the needed measurements to give meaning to acuity scores. We’ve previously discussed the fact that an acuity tool must be comprehensive, taking into account all of the different facets of nursing care. But, we haven’t discussed how a standardized and validated tool can play a critical role in managing and staffing to the acuity of the patients in your facility.
Standardized Acuity Tool to Measure and Benchmark Patient Acuity
A standardized tool gives an organization a spectrum, or scale, to measure all patients with. We’ll focus mostly on the Inpatient methodology we provide, but we have standardized methodologies for Perinatal, Mental Health, Emergency, and Ambulatory environments.
By placing every patient on the same scale of measurement, patients in observation beds, for example, can be compared with patients in critical care beds. Because the methodology uses the same set of indicators that are based on nursing processes, it gives an objective view of what truly is happening at the patient level. The value also comes when comparing not only internally across a methodology, even within a large hospital system with multiple campuses, but externally as well. Every AcuityPlus client uses the identical set of indicators with the same definitions and mappings. This gives us a resource that allows clients to compare their acuity benchmarks across the entire client base, not just a single unit in a single facility.
Maintained to Evolve with Nursing Process and Hospital Environment Changes
Validation is also critical in maintaining our methodologies, so we constantly work to revalidate that the indicators and weights used to determine an acuity score are maintained and accurate to the current environments within hospitals across the nation. We have staff that work tirelessly to maintain these methodologies so that our clients can rely on the acuity tools we provide to make decisions about staffing, resource allocation, and even cohorting of similar patient populations.
With this acuity-driven nursing tool, there is no longer a question about a department’s unfair assignment practices in relation to an RN that floats to their unit. Now, there is a way to objectively manage it. This, in turn, leads to retaining staff because they know that even when they’re floated, they’ll be treated as fairly as the other staff that call that unit home.
How to Select an Acuity Solution That Transforms Nursing Care Teams
Throughout this four-part blog series, The Benefits of an Acuity-Driven Nursing Workload Solution, we share the key elements you should look for in an acuity solution to ensure you optimally manage and deploy your nursing resources. In part one, we discuss how a comprehensive acuity solution is the best practice for developing nursing budgets and managing real-time staffing. Next, part two covers how a nursing process focused solution utilizes a comprehensive set of indicators to capture nursing workload. Then, part three shares the importance of utilizing an objective acuity tool for creating equitable nursing assignments to balance workload across nursing care teams. Finally, part four shares how a standardized and validated acuity solution enables you to benchmark patient acuity, and accurately manage and staff to the acuity of your patients.
If you have any follow-up questions for the author, Walker Schlundt, BSN, RN, please reach out be introduced. Connect with us to learn more about AcuityPlus.
Blog by: Walker Schlundt, BSN, RN
The Benefits of an Acuity-Driven Nursing Workload Solution:
