CALNOC

The mission of CALNOC, the Collaborative Alliance for Nursing Outcomes, is to advance global patient care safety, outcomes and performance measurement efforts.

CALNOC advances global patient care safety, outcomes and performance measurement efforts by leveraging a dynamic nursing outcomes database and reporting system; providing actionable data to guide decision making, performance improvement and public policy; conducting research to optimize patient care excellence; and building leadership expertise in the use of practice-based evidence.

Launched in 1996 as a joint project of the American Nurses Association (ANA)\California and the Association of California Nurse Leaders (ACNL) with funds from ANA and California hospitals, CalNOC has one of the largest regional nursing quality database in the nation reporting nursing-sensitive quality measurements related to hospital performance and patient safety. In 2004, CALNOC received a major grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Today more than 200 hospitals from across the United States and Europe has made CALNOC an International Advocate for patient safety and performance measurement.

At the core of the CALNOC advantage is the member hospital database. Through CalNOC, unit level hospital data are captured about acute care nurse staffing and nurse-related patient outcomes. CalNOC has continuously improved the sophistication and strategic utility of its data reports provided to participating hospitals via secure Web access that has resulted in a virtual dashboard reporting system. Early adopters of CalNOC measures have been able to translate their benchmarking data into information to guide decisions for providing and improving patient care. CALNOC has aggregated over 11 years of data, representing more than 1,600 patient units, over 48 million patient days (48,558,920), over 137,000 patient falls, and 338,000 patients have been evaluated for pressure ulcers and restraint use.