Implementing Innovation: The Creation of an iUnit and the Role of Nursing.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital took on the challenge of thinking about innovation differently with the implementation of an innovation unit or iUnit to create the patient care unit of the future. Goals were to understand more about the innovation process and to test new service models, technology platforms, devices, and deployment models. Key findings from the focus groups included the need for additional training and technical support.

Is the Health Level 7/LOINC document ontology adequate for representing nursing documents?

The use of nursing documents from different electronic health record (EHR) systems is challenging due to inconsistency in document naming across systems and institutions. Mapping each local document name to standard document ontology may enable health care professionals to navigate and retrieve documents efficiently for multiple purposes such as quality assurance, outcomes research or public health reporting. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the sufficiency of the Health Level 7 (HL7)/Logical Observation Identifiers, Names, and Codes (LOINC) document ontology for representing nursing document names.

Applied informatics for quality assessment and improvement.

In our hospital, transition planning for order entry and clinical documentation has presented an opportunity for process changes and the ability to capture quality initiatives into data warehouses, where they can be utilized for building evidence-based practice. For example, the order entry and clinical documentation system allows for data retrieval of performance measures set by organizations including the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and National Quality Forum. These data will reside in one system where they can be mined and extracted for reporting.