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AtStaff Announces Formation of a Research Organization Designed to Improve the Science and Set the Standard for Healthcare Demand Management Methods and Solutions

Posted on: Monday, 26 February 2007, 09:01 CST

AtStaff today announces the official formation and inaugural meeting of a healthcare research organization designed to set standards for the measurement of clinical demand, and facilitate the development and deployment of patient demand methodologies and IT solutions.

The first meeting of the organization, the AtStaff Demand Management Leadership Alliance (DMLA), is being held today in New Orleans.

"AtStaff is very excited to establish this significant industry group," says Beth Pickard, president and chief executive officer at AtStaff. "We firmly believe that patient demand methodologies and systems hold great potential to improve patient safety and healthcare quality. They enable healthcare organizations to consistently align the right level and type of staffing care needed to meet each patient's individual demand for care, and achieve positive patient outcomes."

AtStaff's demand management strategy is based on a fundamental and powerful premise: In order for each patient to receive the appropriate care needed to achieve the best clinical outcome, each patient's demand for staffing care must first be precisely assessed and predicted.

"By establishing the AtStaff Demand Management Leadership Alliance, we seek to accelerate efforts to improve the quality of the science available to healthcare leaders that is applied to the effective management of clinical demand," says Michael Warner, AtStaff's co-founder and chief science officer. "Creating new ways and systems that providers can use to more effectively manage demand will equate to safer, higher quality care for each patient."

DMLA Membership

"As industry leaders in the development of healthcare staffing technology for over 30 years, the principals at AtStaff fully appreciate that we can move much more effectively with partners from many dimensions of the healthcare system," Warner emphasizes. "We are very fortunate to have attracted such an outstanding group of industry experts to join us."

Each alliance member has committed to a one-year term. The official membership of the DMLA includes:

Maureen A. Kahn, MHA, RN, President and Chief Executive Officer at Blessing Hospital in Quincy, Ill.

Marla J. Weston, PhD, MSN, RN, Program Director, Veterans Administration, Workforce Development Office of Nursing Services, Washington, D.C.

Susan K. Newbold, PhD, RN-BC, FAAN, FHIMSS, a leading nursing informatics professional

James Rigby, MPH, BSE, Chief Operations Officer at Forest Park Hospital in St. Louis, Mo.

John Welton, BSN, MNA, PhD, Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston

Linda Goodwin, PhD, BSN, RN, Associate Professor & Director of the Nursing Informatics Program at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Glenn Ritch, MHA, co-founder and Principal Consultant at Tamworth Healthcare in Tamworth, N.H.

John Cuddeback, MD, PhD, a leader in developing clinical IT strategies and programs within hospital enterprise environments

Cheryl B. Jones, PhD, RN, FAAN, Associate Professor, Health Systems Faculty, University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Michael Warner, PhD, MHA, co-founder Chief Science Officer at AtStaff

Beth Pickard, BSN, RN, co-founder and President and Chief Executive Officer at AtStaff

Kate Nell, MSN, RN, Vice President of Product Management at AtStaff

Kraig McKinley, BA, Vice President of Research and Development at AtStaff

Kathleen Williams, MSN, RN-BC, an account manager and clinical informatics professional at AtStaff

Arthur Lambert, MScIE, LHIMSS, Director of Consulting Services and Education at AtStaff

Sharon Eck Birmingham, DNSc, RN, Chief Nursing Executive at AtStaff

Core DMLA Objectives

The primary objectives of the DMLA include:

Defining the applications and decision-support methodologies and systems needed to better measure, track and predict patient demand dynamics.

Determining effective interoperability standards so that clinical information systems can better integrate with demand management systems.

Building widespread data sources that can be used to link resource allocation choices to patient outcomes, providing a solid platform for research.

Engaging academics, management scientists and practitioners in purposeful research

Results of DMLA research and initiatives will be communicated through spoken, print and web-based presentations as well as in journal publications.

"One of our key objectives is better leveraging patient data so that the patient-specific demand for care can be more accurately assessed and predicted," explains Warner. "Various industry-wide initiatives are pursuing standards of interoperability that will allow for the exchange of clinical information across systems and vendors. But current clinical demand measurement and forecasting systems typically fail to make use of much of the information available in clinical data systems. When they do, it is aggregated to a point where it does not help to direct the correct services to the right patient at the right point in time.

"We seek to broaden access to and measurement of the widest possible range of patient demand indicators in order to gain a complete picture and prediction of each patient's staffing care needs."

About AtStaff

AtStaff develops demand management and staff management software that enables healthcare organizations to improve healthcare quality and patient safety, increase profitability, and enhance staff recruitment and retention. Hospital enterprise solutions and physician scheduling systems from AtStaff serve more than 1,200 healthcare organizations, medical facilities, nursing departments and group practices.

AtStaff's newest software is ClairVia Demand Manager™, an outcomes-driven, demand management solution. Its science-based, patient tracking technology enables healthcare organizations to monitor and measure patient demand and maintain the correct mix of clinical staffing for patient demand requirements. ClairVia Demand Manager has the most advanced predictive capabilities on the market, using event-driven Patient Progress Patterns to predict clinical workload demands and constantly refine the accuracy of those projections. Hospitals using ClairVia are able to build a reputation for superior patient safety, better patient experience and clinician satisfaction, while optimizing both their clinical and financial outcomes.

More information is available at www.clairvia.com.

* Patent Pending

Source: Business Wire

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