Implementing a Care Plan System in a Community Hospital Electronic Health Record

Nursing care plans, the result of the nursing process, are important because they guide quality patient care, define the nurse's role in patient treatment, and support patient specific nursing interventions. Nurse leaders at a community hospital identified that 70% of hospitalized patients shared the same three nursing problems and three-day resolution target dates. This quality improvement project involved the implementation of a nursing care plan system within the organization's existing electronic health record platform that supported the development of individualized plans. The implementation included a) integration of care plan activities into the nursing workflow, b) adoption of a standardized nursing language to provide structure nursing care plan data capture and reporting, c) configuration of the electronic health record to recommend patient data-driven care plan problems based on nursing assessment documentation; and d) trended care plan data to identify problem patterns within the patient population. A postimplementation audit indicated a 130% improvement in achieving individualized care plans within 24 hours of admission.