Abstract
Inpatient care funding has limited the use of high staffing levels in inpatient care in specialized acute care hospitals in 2014 due to shortages in the healthcare budget. Therefore, in the future, decision support technology will be required to ensure safe care even when inpatient care is provided by nurse aides and other unlicensed staff in addition to registered nurses.
Inpatient care costs include physician-led medical procedures and the cost of inpatient care. Medical procedures are required to be provided by licensed staff under the healthcare service act. On the other hand, inpatient care can be provided by nurse aides and other unlicensed staff in addition to licensed staff. However, decision-making support for unlicensed staff is not always adequate as unlicensed staff are not always fully trained in the tasks asked of them.
To address this issue, we propose the development of a “Decision Support System for Inpatient Care Staff.” The purpose of this system is to provide information to care staff regarding their tasks and patient conditions in real-time. The system requires integration of electronic medical records, medical devices, and RFID-tagging of medical professionals.
