A graphic tool for tracking variance & comorbidities in cardiac surgery case management

Nursing case management has been documented as one solution to the balance of cost and quality issues in healthcare. A current focus in healthcare is continuous quality improvement (CQI). CQI methods are focused on outcome measurements. Outcome research is a recent development in case management. Tracking variance, evaluating cost reduction and patient effectiveness, and determining types of patients at risk for negative variance are current case management research demands. Tracking patient comorbidities would allow for additional subset "tailoring" of existing critical pathways for specific comorbidities. Little research has been done on these issues. Few systems exist that track both variance and comorbidities. This article presents a graphic, simple, multidisciplinary tracking system that includes comorbidities and allows for individual and group patient variance analysis.