nursing it innovation award
line days—a measure of average duration of
catheter insertion. Its incidence of infection
is below national averages. And the hospital
is now sidestepping financial penalties from
CMS, which deems the condition as preventable and will not pay for its treatment as part
of the admission.
Texas Health runs an enterprise EHR from
Epic, which spans inpatient, ambulatory,
pharmacy, anesthesia, the OR, and multiple
other departments, so it’s no rookie with
information technology. But as Mary Beth
Mitchell, chief nursing informatics officer,
points out, the EHR is only as valuable as its
embedded clinical decision support tools.
“That is the critical piece that impacts care,”
says Mitchell, one of seven nurses who led
the project. And the UTI prevention effort
falls squarely into the decision support fold.
Catheter insertion, says Mitchell, is “an easy
procedure. The nurse puts it in and takes it
out. But that requires a physician order.”
And establishing new workflows around
those orders was the heart and soul of Texas
Health Resources’ project. Patients typically
get catheters when they are in medical-sur-
gery units, says Ellen Batch, R.N., applica-
tions system analyst, who helped redesign
the EHR around the new workflows. But
Mitchell notes that the procedure falls to
background once surgery is over. “The cath-
eter gets put in during surgery and then gets
forgotten. It’s not top of mind to remove it.
The longer it stays in, the more the risk of in-
fection increases.”
Prior to the project, only a handful of Tex-
as Health hospitals compiled catheter-relat-
ed statistics. “We tracked infections, but not
consistently,” says Mitchell. Now, the EHR
can generate data showing when catheters
are inserted, when they are removed, and
how related guidelines are applied. But get-
ting there was not easy. The project, Mitchell
says, required a high degree of interdisci-
plinary collaboration. “Physicians, nursing,
quality and analysts—no one group alone
could have done this,” she says, ticking off a
list of the departments involved.
Meet the Judges of the 2013 Nursing I. T. Innovation Award Contest
the award recog-
nizes innovation and
excellence in using
information technology
in the field of nursing
to directly improve
the quality of care and
patient safety while
maximizing nursing
resources, improve
the work experience
of nurses, or to help
further the professional
practice of nursing.
the award is presented
to a team of nursing
professionals at a
health care organiza-
tion (hospital, physi-
cian group practice or
any other care-giving
site). at least one of
the primary coordina-
tors of the i.t. project
must be a nurse. the
project must be ongo-
ing.
to qualify for this
award, a health care
organization must
submit an essay with
detailed information on
the nursing information
technology project and
the specific, measur-
able results of that
project. the contribu-
tion of nurses to the
innovative project must
be clearly identified.
numerous articles on
informatics topics.
• Contest co-founder
Dana Womack, R.N.,
is a senior health infor-maticist in the Health
strategy & solutions
group at intel Corporation. Formerly a consultant, she has helped
commercial, non-profit
and federal entities
launch new health i.t.
initiatives, and has
helped develop and
implement applications
for point of care use.
womack holds a master’s degree in nursing
informatics from the
university of utah, and
has particular interest
in the intersection of
data visualization, operational informatics,
and healthcare quality.
• Cindy Esser is the
director of emerging
technologies at Butler
Memorial Hospital in
Pennsylvania. respon-
sible for the strategy
and identification of
new innovative tech-
nologies, Esser was
the founder and cham-
pion of the award-
winning technology
for the 2009 nursing
information technol-
ogy innovation award.
Prior to working in
healthcare technology
at both McKesson and
Marconi, she formerly
served as director of
strategic services for
Highmark Blue Cross
Blue shield and a
manager of healthcare
consulting at deloitte.
• Verna Tereceita
(Terry) Laidlow, R.N., is
a healthcare initiative
specialist at sinai Hospital of Baltimore and
an assistant professor
at the university of
Maryland, school of
nursing in Baltimore.
she holds degrees in
trauma critical care,
nursing education
and nursing informat-
Following are profiles
of the judges:
• the co-founder of the
nursing i.t. innova-
tion award, Susan K.
Newbold, R.N., is a
healthcare informatics
consultant and director
of the nursing infor-
matics Boot Camp,
based in Franklin,
tenn. she is a fellow in
the american academy
of nursing and a fellow
in the Healthcare infor-
mation Management
and systems society.
a pioneer in nursing
informatics, newbold
created a nursing infor-
matics review course
in 1995, co-edited five
books and has written
ics. she is currently
a member of ania-
Caring. Laidlow was
instrumental in imple-
menting an organiza-
tion-wide, integrated,
electronic protocol that
won the bronze award
in the 2011 nursing
information technology
innovation contest.
