Staffing tool

I don't work in NICU and my hospital doesn't have one....but we use EPIC for patient charting. It generates an acuity score (based on a bunch of factors determined by our hospital and programmed by our computer folks, but I assume the structure for this exists within EPIC). We use Kronos OptiLink for staff assignments...it has some "wizard" buttons to help balance based on acuity or continuity of care. I work on a tiny unit so we are not the best exemplar, but the acuity score is only as good as you make it. Ours depends on orders, number of lines and meds, and nurse charting (so if I chart that I toileted an adult patient who is a +2 assist to the commode every hour, that patient's score should be higher than a similar patient who only gets up once a night). There are some glitches with ours...new admits have a low score for several hours when realistically almost any new admit is a busy patient at first even if they turn out to be stable.

Our charge nurses use a custom excel spreadsheet that allows them to input certain characteristics about the babies (oscillator vs. ra, isolette vs crib, IV fluids etc.) and it generates a acuity score and nursing requirents. It's really nifty. I'm not sure if someone in the unit is/was an excel wizard or if they got it from somewhere else but it is mapped out to our unit.