Demonstrating the Value of Nursing Care Through Use of a Unique Nurse Identifier

As healthcare transitions to a value-based reimbursement model, nursing documentation in electronic health record (EHR) and other health IT systems will increasingly be used to demonstrate nursing’s contribution to that value. Nursing documentation can also be used to measure the contributions of nurses to improvements in individual and population health outcomes, patient safety, operational efficiency and clinical effectiveness. Today, nursing’s contribution to the health and care of individuals and communities is difficult to measure and often invisible. This lack of visibility is due, in part, to the absence of a unique identifier for nurses. Nurse leaders have identified the need for a unique nurse identifier, without which the aggregation and use of data to improve nursing practice is not possible. Nurses and their employers need a mechanism to track nursing licensure across job and location changes throughout a nurse’s career. Hospitals and health systems need the ability to uniquely identify nurses in the EHR, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and other health IT systems for documentation, education, research and training purposes. This article describes why a unique nurse identifier is essential and outlines the potential benefits and implications for adoption of an identifier, as well as policy recommendations. The Nursing Knowledge: Big Data Science Conference Health IT Policy Workgroup is collaborating with key stakeholders to achieve an optimal solution such as the use of a unique nurse identifier to demonstrate the value of nursing.