New Epic, Press Ganey integration automates nursing quality, safety data reporting

Patient experience monitoring company Press Ganey has taken its data integration partnership with Epic a step further, unveiling Monday an additional collaboration focused on nursing-related safety outcomes.  

Press Ganey’s National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) will begin pulling indicators and outcomes from the electronic health record platform, the group said. The database helps nursing leaders benchmark their team’s performance on more than 600 different measures from the administrative documentation and medical records of over 2,000 participating organizations.

NDNQI’s Epic integration will begin by automating the reporting of five specific indicators: catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line bloodstream infections, inpatient falls, outpatient falls and pressure injuries.

"Our expanded collaboration with Epic to integrate reporting of nursing sensitive indicators is a pivotal step towards using real-time data to improve the experience and quality of care," Darren Dworkin, president and chief operating officer for Press Ganey, said in a release. "By removing manual reporting of quality and safety data, we can reduce work for nursing leaders and speed up the time to insight and action.” 

The companies told Fierce Healthcare they do not yet have a release data for customers, but that they are "ensuring that it will be aligned with Epic's standard release and upgrade process."

The NDNQI integration, they said, is an extension of a partnership announced just over a year ago to bring Press Ganey’s patient experience data into Epic’s 300 million-plus patient records.

That effort—one of several third-party co-development partnerships listed within the “Workshop” page of Epic’s recently revamped Showroom website—allows organizations that are clients of both Epic and Press Ganey to surface patient experience metrics and insights to staff within their workflows. The companies highlighted Epic Users Group Meeting workshops held over the last year that they said are guiding their co-development projects.

“The new integration technologies developed in Workshop will allow nurse leaders to devote more time to acting on data, with an aim to ultimately enhance the quality of care,” Emily Barey, vice president for nursing at Epic, said in a release. “This collaboration intends not only to reduce the amount of required abstracting and formatting but also ensure that documentation supports the essential work of nurses in keeping patients safe.”   

Press Ganey is no longer the only company bringing patient experience data into Epic’s systems. In December, Qualtrics announced a similar integration that would flag relevant, data-based insights for providers and front-line staff using the platform.