Core Measures

I am a float medsurg nurse. I was recently put on light duty due to surgery and was placed in Outcomes Management for light duty. I have had my eyes opened to a world behind the scenes in the hospitals which work to keep the patients safe and the hospitals compliant which results in reimbursement. It is somewhat of a joke that Outcomes Management in our hospital are a pain in the butt to the floor nurses. We try to be nice and helpful, but in the end, our job is to ensure that proper documentation is completed on vaccinations, pain, and VTE prophylaxis. I never appreciated these things as a floor nurse. Of course I always did my best to document as completely and thoroughly as possible, but what I didn't realize was that if certain documentation wasn't completed within particular time frames, the core measures are failed for the hospital. Core measures are directly linked to hospital reimbursement, and if you want to look at the big picture, this means our wages and raises depend upon things like this as well. I had no idea how much time is spent on spread sheets, chart audits and phone calls back and forth to the floor nurses to ensure that complete compliance was met during a patient stay. I just thought I would share this because it occurred to me that as a new grad, this would have been a great part of orientation. It would have allowed me to know the seriousness of completing things timely and completely. Even if it meant digging for information or calling POA's for information to help my hospital out.