NEAT: Nurse Effort Assessment Tool—Human Factors Considerations in Designing for Appropriate Staffing

This research has developed an algorithm to measure behavioral health acuity that relies predominantly on patient-level information from electronic health records (EHRs) but also has nurse-input-driven parameters contributing to the tool, known as the Nurse Effort Assessment Tool (NEAT). The overall objective is to create the NEAT to address the increasing acuity of behavioral patients by moving away from subjective patient assessment to using an automated algorithm that draws predominantly from the rich data in EHRs. Data from over 9,000 patient records provided statistically significant results that the subjective rating both correlates and serves as significant predictors for the NEAT score. Future research looks to expand the algorithm and validate it across multiple clinical sites.