Data Analytics: An Unexpected Hero of the Staffing Crisis

The past 24 months has brought unprecedented challenges and changes to long-term care. With the current staffing crisis, ongoing pandemic concerns, and heightened regulatory oversight, nursing facilities are being asked to do more with less. Forty-three percent of nurses are considering leaving the healthcare profession by the end 2021, and 78 percent of nurses say their job priorities have shifted. A September 2021 poll reports that 19% of long-term care workers have left their jobs since February 2020.

With limited staffing resources, what if skilled nursing facilities could make their data could work harder for them — allowing them to ease administrative burdens, while improving care outcomes?

As part of a mission-driven nursing facility, providing hands-on care for aging seniors is typically the most rewarding part of a clinician’s day – and is often the reason they stay in the profession. But staff frequently spend more time completing administrative paperwork than they do caring for patients. During this presentation, we’ll highlight how Affinity Health Services utilizes live post-acute data analytics to help support core foundational systems, improve clinical and quality outcomes, maintain compliance, and streamline clinical workflow. By accessing live data for daily clinical and weekly interdisciplinary meetings, Affinity prioritizes care management based on acuity and adjusts care plans and workload balance accordingly – allowing their facilities’ care teams to spend more time at the bedside instead of behind a desk.

Angela M. Huffman, RN, WCC, CHC, Vice President of Clinical Services for Affinity, will share how their facilities leverage real-time patient data found within their electronic health records to standardize care delivery and documentation without requiring additional work or data entry from nursing or agency staff. By equipping clinical staff with actionable data, we’ll explore how facilities can avoid spreadsheet fatigue and outdated reporting, and instead drive operational efficiencies, promote faster staff engagement, and better inform clinical decision making.

First-hand insights and best practices will be shared on the role that live clinical analysis can have on intervening early in care to reduce negative outcomes and break the cycle of readmissions, particularly for nursing facilities’ most vulnerable, high-risk patients. The session will also provide practical strategies Affinity has taken, and other facilities can replicate, to maintain regulatory compliance and survey preparedness, improve Star ratings, and monitor quality through a data-driven QAPI plan – all which help increase partner referrals.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe how key foundational systems and data analytics can be incorporated into daily clinical operations to streamline workflow and inform acuity-based adjustments while supporting patient-centric care
• Establish and prioritize data-driven standardized care pathways and documentation to reduce administrative burdens and address regulatory requirements
• Identify quality assurance and process improvement activities to maintain regulatory compliance and survey preparedness, monitor infection control, and manage risk

Speakers:

• Angela M. Huffman, RN, WCC, CHC, Vice President of Clinical Services, Affinity Health Services
• Kathy Derleth, RN, BSN, Senior Clinical Account Manager, Real Time Medical Systems

This session will be presented at the LeadingAge 2022 Annual Meeting & Expo.