Background: Nurse practitioners (NPs) provide high-quality, comprehensive health care at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical centers in various practice settings. Accurately determining the productivity of NPs is essential to understanding their overall contribution to veteran care. There is a lack of understanding of the contributors to the variability among VHA medical centers regarding their processes for capturing these data. Using benchmark data from the VHA Support Service Center Capital Assets application, this quality improvement (QI) initiative implemented a series of plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles to determine whether increased education regarding billing and coding, along with person classification and labor mapping accuracy, could increase NP productivity.
Local problem: The problem identified through an analysis of NP productivity revealed variability across multiple VHA facilities.
Methods: The PDSA method was employed in this QI project. The QI team compared the total workload relative value units (wRVU) for NPs in each participating facility pre and post a three-phase intervention.
Interventions: Nurse practitioners' person classification and labor mapping accuracy was evaluated at each site. An educational program regarding billing and coding was developed and delivered to the NP frontline staff. The QI team compared the total wRVUs for the NPs at each facility pre- and postintervention.
Results: An increase in the wRVUs was observed following the intervention across six facilities. Five of the seven facilities displayed stability in relative value unit improvement postintervention.
Conclusion: Educating frontline NPs on billing, coding, person classification, and labor mapping can improve NP productivity.
Copyright © 2024 American Association of Nurse Practitioners.