April 17, 2015 |

Informatics nurses have big impact on care quality: HIMSS survey

Informatics nurses bring continue to bring great value to the use of clinical systems and technologies at their healthcare organizations, according to the 2015 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Impact of the Informatics Nurse Survey.

The results of the survey, released April 12 at the 2015 HIMSS annual meeting in Chicago, indicated that informatics nurses bring greatest value to the implementation phase (85 percent) and optimization phase (83 percent) of clinical systems process. Overall, the survey included 576 respondents.

Key survey results:

Quality of patient care: Respondents reported a direct positive effect on the quality of care patients receive as a result of the work of informatics nurses. Sixty percent of respondents indicated that informatics nurses have a high degree of impact on the quality of care.
Direct effect on clinical systems: Respondents reported that informatics nurses have a high degree of impact on workflow, patient safety and user acceptance.
Hiring informatics professionals: Approximately one-fourth of respondents (23 percent) reported that their organizations hired their first informatics professional before 2000.
Executive leadership: Nearly two-thirds of respondents (61 percent) work for an organization that employs an informatics professional in a leadership position. Twenty percent of respondents reported working for an organization that employs a chief nursing information officer.

See the survey in its entirety here.

This article originally appeared in the Long-Term Living sister publication Healthcare Informatics during its live coverage from HIMSS15.