Ambulatory Care Nurse-Sensitive Indicators Series: Capturing the Role of Nursing in Ambulatory Care--The Case for Meaningful Nurse-Sensitive Measurement.

The nation has been on a quest to advance quality in providing health care services and improving patient outcomes. The challenge has been to identify and define metrics that will demonstrate improvement. Acute care settings have a fairly well-established system of quality measurement, but ambulatory care systems are in less-developed stages. Imperative to accurate quality measurement in ambulatory care is to identify and define metrics that reflect the value of registered nurses to improved patient care and outcomes as well as to the organization. The American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN) established a task force to determine appropriate measures of nursing quality. The task force spent 2 years investigating measures and produced an Industry Report that addresses measures of nursing quality. This article is the first in a series of articles that will reveal and discuss the contents of the Industry Report.