AtStaff, Inc., announces today that the University of Virginia Medical Center, a nationally renowned academic medical center and Magnet designated organization, has selected AtStaff’s ClairVia(R) staff and demand management solutions in support of its ongoing mission to provide excellence and innovation in patient care.
The University of Virginia Medical Center, an integrated network of primary and specialty care services anchored by a 500-bed hospital and state-designated Level 1 trauma center, will implement three ClairVia solutions:
— ClairVia(R) Demand Manager – Leverages patient-tracking and flow management technology to measure, monitor and predict patient-specific care demand
— ClairVia(R) Caregiver Assignment – Selects and assigns specific caregivers based on each patient’s individual care and workload needs
— ClairVia(R) Staff Manager – Facilitates day-to-day staffing coverage, allocation and deployment based on demand requirements.
“As an academic medical center and a Magnet organization, the University of Virginia strives for excellence in patient care every day,” says Dr. Pamela Cipriano, PhD, RN, FAAN, NEA-BC, Chief Clinical Officer and Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Virginia Health System. “We have a number of systems that collect and store data, but they are not integrated to allow for meaningful analysis. The ClairVia suite of software products gives us the ability to integrate and analyze staffing data together with patient volume and outcomes data. This information will enable data-driven decisions at all levels.
“ClairVia’s robust reporting functions provide managers with the tools for improved resource utilization, and our staff gain the ability to control their schedules. It’s a win for everyone.”
Beth Pickard, President and Chief Executive Officer at AtStaff, says: “AtStaff is extremely honored to serve The University of Virginia Medical Center, one of the nation’s finest academic medical centers with an exceptional reputation for delivering outstanding patient care. We embark on this exciting opportunity in a true partnership spirit as both organizations are focused on the same vital and fundamental objective: benefiting human health by achieving positive patient outcomes and advancing the quality of life.”
UVa Medical Center to rely on ClairVia solutions to transform its staffing care delivery, meet growing performance-driven requirements, and participate in industry-leading nursing research initiatives
“AtStaff’s commitment to improving care quality and patient safety, its leadership in nursing care research, its superior technology, and its ability to forge strong relationships were all key factors in our decision,” says Terri Haller, MBA, MSN, NEA-BC, RN, Director of Business Operations and Workforce Development, Clinical Care Services, at the University of Virginia Medical Center.
Haller, who took a leadership role in UVa’s vendor selection process and serves as the ClairVia project director, explains that the implementation of ClairVia solutions is central to the medical center’s transformational efforts in healthcare staffing and care delivery. She says UVa will rely on ClairVia to achieve the following organizational goals in its redesign initiative:
— Improve patient safety
— Improve the efficiency of staffing operations, specifically by:
— Better managing patient flow
— More accurately aligning staffing workload to patient demand
— Matching caregiver characteristics to patient-specific needs
— Reducing “reactive” decision-making by predicting demand variables
— Enhance the organization’s ability to recruit and retain quality staff
— Increase operating margins
“ClairVia solutions directly address what I would refer to as ‘a perfect storm’ in healthcare,” emphasizes Haller. “Declining reimbursements, coupled with non-payment for Hospital Acquired Conditions and emphasis on patient throughput are challenges that all organizations face. It is essential for organizations to have information and tools to manage patient care and staffing resources in a fiscally responsible manner.”
Haller points out that ClairVia’s outcomes-based and evidence-driven capabilities provide the data needed to make long-term, lasting improvements in patient outcomes and healthcare delivery.
“For instance, because ClairVia measures the type of individualized care and the amount of nursing intensity each patient receives, it can assess the outcomes implications occurring at these critical caregiver and patient connections. This has great potential to move nursing practice ahead, and transform how nursing care is viewed and reimbursed.”
UVa is one of many leading healthcare organizations that have agreed to participate in a national research study sponsored by AtStaff that will examine the relationships among nurse staffing, nurse-specific characteristics and clinical and cost outcomes.
“AtStaff’s academic approach and its orientation toward nursing research and best practice really impressed us as an organization,” Haller says. “We are excited to be a part of this ground-breaking research, along with other AtStaff customers, that could help shape the future of nursing care and reimbursement models.”
She indicates that ClairVia, because of the quality and relevance of the information it gathers as well as through its advanced automation, will be immensely helpful in preparing and furnishing data to organizations such as the American Nurses Credentialing Center, The Joint Commission and other benchmarking or regulatory entities.
“It’s going to be a great help to us because we’ll not only have real-time decision support for daily staff management, but we’ll have the easily accessible data for all of our reporting purposes.”
ClairVia Demand Manager & ClairVia Caregiver Assignment
“We view both ClairVia Demand Manager and Caregiver Assignment as basically one module because together they automate the critical connection between each patient’s clinical requirements and the staffing resource available and qualified to meet that requirement,” Haller explains. “These products provide the patient demand and staffing information — in a completely integrated manner — that our managers need each day to meet patient care requirements and improve patient throughput.”
Through HL-7 integration with hospitals’ ADT systems, ClairVia Demand Manager tracks and compares each patient’s real-time movement through each phase of care against an outcomes-based, individualized patient progress pattern.
“Another factor that attracted us to Demand Manager is its predictive capabilities,” Haller says. “Demand Manager proactively identifies outliers and other variables of patient demand so we can pinpoint what staffing resources that will be needed days ahead, not just shifts ahead.”
UVa’s future plans include integrating its EMR with Demand Manager so that patient progress patterns reflect patient-specific clinical data and assessments, in addition to ADT data.
The final step in patient-focused staffing is matching each caregiver’s background, including specific competencies, certifications and professional development qualities, to each patient’s clinical requirements — the role of ClairVia Caregiver Assignment.
“We’re excited about implementing Caregiver Assignment,” Haller says. This software allows us to make staffing assignments based on the best fit between each caregiver, their competencies and skill level, with each patient,” Haller says. “This module has great potential to help providers report on and analyze the merits and effectiveness of different caregiver-to-patient linkages. This is particularly important given the mounting pressures on healthcare providers to demonstrate quantifiable improvements in care, quality and performance metrics.”
ClairVia Staff Manager
The University of Virginia Medical Center also will be relying on ClairVia Staff Manager for day-to-day staff management, including enterprise scheduling and staffing, real-time decision support, and advanced productivity measurement and reporting.
In addition to ensuring that staffing resources are aligned based on patient demand tracking and prediction, ClairVia Staff Manager provides comprehensive communication capabilities for healthcare stakeholders via personalized dashboards.
For employees, the dashboards provide the means for constant communication, interaction and collaboration. At any time and place, they can submit schedule requests, sign up for “shift opportunities” (available open shifts), exchange shifts with colleagues, and view their current and future schedules.
“The personalized dashboards in Staff Manager give everyone an easy-to-use, front-and-center point of control for scheduling and staffing,” notes Haller. “Managers have the peace of mind of knowing that all the employees available and interested in working extra time can easily sign up for open shifts, and discover all their options. Staff will gain the ability to go online, and gain more control over their schedules.”
Nicole Henley, a clinician who serves as a scheduler in an intensive care unit at UVa, says she’s eager to begin using ClairVia Staff Manager.
“The system is really user-friendly and intuitive,” expresses Henley, a clinician who serves as a scheduler in UVa intensive care unit. “Staff will be able to access schedules from work and home, and identify colleagues for shift swaps. This system will save tons of time for schedulers, managers, and staff.”
Software ease of use, Haller adds, is essential as UVa employees will be depending on the system every day.
“Even with all of its innovation, the key thing that impresses our people — and certainly impressed our vendor selection committee, which included a very broad mix of staff managers, clinicians and schedulers in different disciplines — is that ClairVia software is easy-to-use and user-friendly software.”
About the University of Virginia Health System
One of the nation’s leading medical research centers, UVA Health System is located in Charlottesville and has five components: the Medical Center, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library and the Health Services Foundation.
The Medical Center is an integrated network of primary and specialty care services ranging from wellness programs and routine checkups to the most technologically advanced care. The hub of the Health System is a hospital with over 550 beds and a state-designated Level 1 trauma center.
For more information, visit www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/toplevel/home/home.cfm
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.
For more information, visit www.atstaff.com
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