Infor®, the industry cloud company, announced the availability of Infor Clinical Science, part of the Infor Workforce Management suite. This application uses an evidence-based methodology to measure the workload of each patient, accounting for both direct and indirect workloads, to provide leaders with a complete picture of labor requirements for each shift, unit or department, all based on documentation already occurring in the electronic medical record (EMR). By measuring the workloads at the task/activity level, healthcare leaders will have deeper insights into work being performed and can adjust and adapt scheduling in real time to directly address and combat the ever-present healthcare worker shortage.
“Because of the nursing shortage, nurses (and other healthcare staff) are often asked to work overtime by staying longer for a shift or picking up extra shifts. At times, this is appropriate and many nurses enjoy the overtime, but this can also lead to exhaustion and burnout and create opportunities for errors. Leaders need to ensure they understand the schedules their employees are working and be protective of those who are working longer hours or picking up extra shifts to ensure they are getting adequate rest and the necessary support to provide safe patient care,” said Matt Breslin, Infor executive vice president and general manager. “With this application, we are now able to provide decision makers with a complete picture of up-to-date patient and unit staffing needs along with their available resources, so each unit is staffed. This ensures employees are deployed in an efficient manner across the organization.”
Clinical Science uses documentation already occuring in the EMR to give leaders insights into the patient care requirements for each unit across the organization. This helps decision makers deploy available staff in the most efficient manner possible to provide the needed patient care and deliver the necessary data in a single system to simplify this process. At the unit level, Clinical Science provides deep insights into each patient’s unique care needs and, by evaluating individual patient workloads, room proximity, and continuity of care, helps inform the nurse-patient assignment process to ensure fair and equitable patient assignments.
Clinical Science is also able to support departments with mandated staffing ratios. The application can help ensure the assignments are fair and equitable and can help leaders determine units or departments that may need additional support. No two patients are alike, and Clinical Science accounts for the differences between patients to ensure optimal patient care, while maintaining any mandated ratios. Compared to other tools on the market, Infor is now the only solution that offers an end-to-end experience deployed in a single cloud solution for healthcare labor planning and tracking, including alignment with patient workloads and the assignment of patients to nurses to ensure safe, high-quality patient care.
