In an effort to reduce repetitive testing, healthcare has begun to adopt information technology to optimize care plans and medical assistants. But IT still can't replace human labor when it comes to patient care services, and in the case of hospitals themselves, nearly 70 percent of their budgets are spent on labor costs. Nurses, therapeutic specialists and internists remain indispensable.
Misallocation of manpower leads to medical errors
When it comes to labor costs, one has to face up to the cost pressures that are further increasing due to the gradual transition of the healthcare industry to commercialization. China's healthcare organizations are undergoing comprehensive healthcare reform, and the ongoing transition and economic pressures are inadvertently increasing the cost variables in healthcare organizations' operations. The first solution healthcare organizations think of is to cut the number of nurses as a way to reduce cost pressures. However, if the number of nurses is cut inappropriately, it can lead to medical errors, reduced quality of care for patients, and overloading of the remaining nurses, as well as more serious problems such as staff turnover and medical litigation.
To address this problem, some organizations use nurse-to-patient ratios as a basis for staffing. A century ago, the U.S. required hospitals to accept Medicare funds to ensure that "there are sufficient numbers of certified registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and other personnel to serve all patients in need of care." Currently, California and Massachusetts have laws that establish minimum nurse-to-patient ratios, which in 2004 were set at 1:1 in the operating room and 1:6 in the hospital room, and require that "hospitals maintain a patient acuity rating system, which shall be used to guide other staff, as necessary, in the designation of certain nursing tasks to nurses who are licensed to practice as RNs". The law also requires that Measure the competence of nurses before assigning them to nursing duties and provide appropriate positions while documenting staffing levels."
In 2014, Massachusetts also established a minimum nurse-to-patient ratio, but that ratio only applies to critical care. Seven other states require hospitals to have staff committees to be accountable for programs and staff policies (CT, IL, NV, OH, OR, TCX, WA), and five more require some form of open and/or public **** reporting function (IL, NJ, NY, RI, VT).On April 29, 2015, Representatives Lois Capps (D-CA) and David Joyce (R-OH), and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Initiative, which requires healthcare organizations that join to establish a committee to ensure that at least 55% of the organization's composition is frontline nursing nurses and to establish a nurse staffing program for each unit.
Meanwhile, the relevant healthcare research and treatment organizations have written policy innovation papers that point out the problems caused by low nurse-to-patient ratios by evaluating the medical literature. Numerous studies have demonstrated that among the many negative impacts of low ratios on patient safety and patient recovery outcomes are serious problems such as early patient deaths and complications.
Let's come back and look at the global comparison with our country. According to the existing standards of the Ministry of Health, the actual nurse-bed ratio in general hospital wards in China is no less than 0.4:1, with each nurse responsible for no more than eight patients on average. However, there is currently a serious shortage of nurses on the clinical front line, and many hospitals simply cannot meet this standard. Nurses are in a long-term work overload, dirty environment and other poor state, personnel turnover is serious, and this and China's growing need for nursing groups to form a serious contradiction.
Will information technology be able to cure the disease?
In summary, the vast majority of organizations will set the staffing of nurses according to the number of patients. Although the legislation mentioned earlier provides some guidance on setting up staffing, the ratio does not actually take into account the needs of patients. Staffing ratios based on patient numbers are too direct and do not integrate patient care needs with sensitivities related to patient diagnoses, let alone further mine the data for valuable guidance.
In addition, patient data from the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act-driven EHR provides an accurate assessment of patient care needs and required staff skills. EHRs are also used for patient-sensitive assessments, and this assessment data also provides a reliable and accurate assessment of patients and their care needs, allowing healthcare organizations to achieve more accurate clinical staffing.
While information technology will never replace patient caregivers, it provides a smarter way for those employees to help their patients in the most effective way possible. Other industries may have had negative experiences for their consumers as a result of cutting back on staff. But for the healthcare organization industry, the problem is much more than just a negative experience because, patients depend on them for their health and lives. Therefore, healthcare organizations have no choice but to continue to provide better services to their patients.
It is precisely because of this need to provide better service to patients that healthcare organizations must ensure that nurses are not overworked to avoid unnecessary medical errors and to provide a truly safe environment for patients. The use of new digital health information technologies, such as electronic medical records, Internet health, telemedicine, and big data analytics, is changing the way doctors, patients, and other healthcare stakeholders interact with each other. By relying on the latest information technology tools, healthcare organizations have access to a great way to meet the needs of their patients while protecting the investment of their caregivers and managing the cost of care more effectively.