The following articles were published in the Perspectives in Ambulatory Care department of the Nursing Economic$ journal and authored by members of the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing. The PIAC column captures the essence and makes sense of today's changing ambulatory care market.
The driving forces that are motivating many advanced practice nurses (APNs) to create new, high-value practices within the ambulatory care setting reflect the need for better, higher quality patient care, a deep commitment to spending healthcare dollars wisely, and most importantly, the relentless search for nursing interventions that lead to real improvement in the health of patients. Business planning provides the path through which new APN-run ambulatory practices become a reality and a success. A well-developed and sophisticated business plan is an essential first step in setting up a successful APN practice that reinforces APNs' contributions to health care, and leads to real rewards for patients and families, APNs, and the healthcare industry.
In the ambulatory care setting where care is episodic, occurs over time, and is impacted by multiple, interprofessional care team members, it is difficult to measure the specific impact of the registered nurse (RN). Many innovative processes are being developed and individual RNs are finding unique ways to benchmark quality that are nurse sensitive and improve outcomes for patients. The American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing Ambulatory Care Nurse-Sensitive Indicator Industry Report: Meaningful Measurement of Nursing in the Ambulatory Patient Care Environment focused on the clinical practice and the quality improvement/research role of the RN and identified nine clinical practice dimensions and three quality/research dimensions. Roles of the ambulatory care RN and exemplars classified according to those roles and dimensions are provided.
Ambulatory care registered nurses (RNs) have a pivotal role in educating, encouraging, motivating, and supporting patients to be engaged in their care and achieve their health care goals. To improve health outcomes, patients need to be engaged in attaining these goals. RNs are instrumental in this process and well-controlled studies will demonstrate their impact on helping patient’s engage in their care.
The nation has been on a quest to advance quality in providing health care services and improving patient outcomes. The challenge has been to identify and define metrics that will demonstrate improvement. Acute care settings have a fairly well-established system of quality measurement, but ambulatory care systems are in less-developed stages. Imperative to accurate quality measurement in ambulatory care is to identify and define metrics that reflect the value of registered nurses to improved patient care and outcomes as well as to the organization. The American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN) established a task force to determine appropriate measures of nursing quality. The task force spent 2 years investigating measures and produced an Industry Report that addresses measures of nursing quality. This article is the first in a series of articles that will reveal and discuss the contents of the Industry Report.