The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS, Chicago) is endorsing the organization of a Proclamation for Change, “Time & Motion: Transforming the Hospital Patient Care Environment,” and the National League for Nursing (NLN) position statement, “Preparing the Next Generation of Nurses to Practice in a Technology-Rich Environment: An Informatics Agenda.”
The Proclamation for Change was issued in response to the results of the time-and-motion study by researchers at Ascension Health and Kaiser Permanente that ended in June 2006. HIMSS supports the findings, which state that in order to transform the hospital-patient care environment and improve the delivery of safe, high quality, patient centered care, the following components are necessary:
- Patient-centered design: hospital and technology design should be organized around patient needs and be tailored to address unique factors and diverse patient populations.
- System-wide, integrated technology: architects and technology vendors should work closely with nurses, physicians and other care giving departments in all aspects of designing workspace and technologies in order to ensure a system wide approach to meeting patient needs.
- Seamless workplace environments: to consistently provide the highest quality care to patients, the physical design of medical-surgical units should be completely integrated with caregiver work processes and the technologies they use, so caregivers always have the right medication, materials and information, in the right place, at the right time.
- Vendor partnerships: the design and operation of technology devices should be intuitive, error-free, and part of interoperable systems, so that health care providers can access information in hospital or outpatient settings.
