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Patient Assign Overview

Note: Your Staff Manager configuration may not include this optional application. To add this application to your configuration, contact your Clinical Consultant or Client Advocate.

Every inpatient nursing unit needs an efficient way to assign caregivers to patients and then report on those assignments. You make assignments every day for each shift where health care professionals provide direct care. Changes in staff schedules, patient turnover, and changes in demand for nursing care contribute to the need to update to these assignments throughout the day.

Patient Assign makes it easier for you to:

• Assign caregivers to patients.
• Assign communication devices to caregivers.
• Update, track, and report on assignment data.

In addition, Patient Assign integrates the data captured by Assignment Manager, Demand Manager, and Outcomes-Driven Acuity. Thus, Patient Assign users can use their data to provide more precise and equitable assignments that reflect the true patient care needs.

When using Patient Assign, be aware of the following information:

• The Personnel are externally maintained on the iBus option on the Demand Manager Facility Settings iBus tab requires that the caregiver and patient identifiers in Assignment Manager and CareAware iBus must match in order for the two applications to exchange caregiver and patient assignment information.
• If you select the option Send Caregiver and Staff Assignments to the iBus on the Demand Manager Facility Settings iBus tab, Assignment Manager sends all assignment information to the iBus, including the patients caregivers are assigned to, each time you save the assignments. In the Cerner Millennium environment, the assignment information is used to generate patient and caregiver lists in Millennium.
• If you select the option Enable Communication Device Assignment and Messaging on the iBus on the Demand Manager Facility Settings iBus tab, the alert hierarchy is established for each patient when you assign caregivers. The primary and secondary alert positions for each patient and the tertiary alert position for the profile are sent from Assignment Manager to the iBus. CareAware AlertLink then uses the data from iBus in routing secondary patient alerts to assigned caregivers. In addition, text messages may be entered and sent to caregiver communication devices using the Assignment Manager screens.

Organizations using CareAware iBus can suppress the secondary assignment row (and its corresponding secondary alert position) in Assignment Manager. Your Cerner Clairvia Clinical Consultant or Client Advocate sets this Suppress Secondary Row option, which can be applied to your entire organization or on a per facility basis.

Note: You can set how caregiver and patient names are displayed in Patient Assign. You can also set whether caregiver and patient genders are displayed. See Configuring Facility Settings: The Patient and Caregiver Identifiers Tab for more information.

Prerequisites

Patient Assign requires installation of the optional Demand Manager and Assignment Manager applications. If you are interested in adding these applications to your solution, contact your Clinical Consultant or Client Advocate.

The Shift Overlap Feature for CareAware iBus Users

One of the benefits of Patient Assign is its electronic record of caregiver assignments. You can easily find who cared for a patient during any shift on any day. These records are based on the shift start and end times, such as 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Using the CareAware iBus to access patient data in other solutions, however, can create some overlap between assignments. For example, you could have caregivers receive data on their assigned patients starting 15 minutes before the shift and ending 30 minutes after the shift. This makes two caregivers available to a patient during shift changes.

The Shift Overlap feature supports this overlapping of caregiver assignments in iBus. It subtracts minutes from the start of a patient assignment and adds minutes to the assignment’s end, giving caregivers access to patient data and alerts for a longer period. Your organization defines the amount of Shift Overlap time at the start and end of shifts.

If you have questions about Shift Overlap, contact your Client Advocate.

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