Author: Jackie Larson

At this year’s ANCC National Magnet Conference ® in Orlando, Avantas conducted a brief survey to see what was on the minds of staff nurses and nursing leaders at some of the country’s top hospitals and health systems. How do staff shortages you are experiencing at this time compare with the previous 4 years? More...

One of the most energetic conferences of the year, the ANCC National Magnet Conference® is just around the corner, October 2-4 in Orlando. This year’s conference is expected to draw more than 7,500 nursing professionals from far and wide to take part in events including 135 concurrent sessions and 150 live posters with the potential…

Last year nearly 600,000 patent applications were filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. To put it another way, that’s 600,000 new ideas that inventors and companies believe in and feel strongly about protecting. That’s a fascinating thought. Some of the inventions patented range from breakthrough, life-saving devices to things that are a little…

On March 19 we issued a press release announcing our relationship with one of the country’s premier academic medical institutions (read it here). But our partnership with Penn State Hershey actually began about six months prior when they made the decision to implement the first phase of our HELM® methodology. In this phase we conducted a...

As we all know, Florence Nightingale, “the Lady with the Lamp,” is the founder of modern day nursing. But something many do not know is that she was also a pioneer in the visual representation of data, i.e., graphs. During the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale developed graphs to convey complex data about mortality rates to…

When hospitals are looking at cutting labor expenses the first place they tend to look is their agency usage. This is a logical impulse, but it often leads to the idea that if cutting back on agency is good, eliminating it is even better. While this might sound reasonable, it is generally not a good...

At the HIMSS13 conference in New Orleans this week there is no short supply of factoids about the rate at which information is exploding. It is certainly true that in healthcare we have more access to data than ever before, but the industry’s access to information is a continuum. Some organizations are further along than…

Back in November, Becker’s Hospital Review published an article highlighting the “no layoff” philosophies of the CEOs of ThedaCare and Scripps Health (both are five-hospital systems). What these two CEOs demonstrate with this philosophy, besides compassion, prudence, and long-term vision, is the understanding that labor is an asset, not an expense. A health system’s workforce...

One of the most effective ways of controlling costs, coordinating care, and ensuring consistent practices (leading to predictable and sustainable results) across a health system is through the implementation of a centralized Resource Management Center (RMC). Also (although inaccurately) referred to as “centralized staffing,” centralized resource management is an approach that goes well beyond the...

Regardless of personal feelings or political affiliations, the business of healthcare moves “forward” with more certainty than before the election. Increased certainty, however, does not mean increased clarity on what lies ahead and what the best strategy is for navigating a road that hasn’t yet been built. As states have now decided whether or not…