midnight census

An accounting of the number of residents living in a care facility at night. This number is the one used in the U.S. by the Centers for Medicare Services to determine how much reimbursement the facility will receive for the care of its residents. It may differ from the daytime census in that during the day residents may travel to or occupy more than one facility so that they can receive specialized care services.

References in periodicals archive ?

Traditional staffing models of "hours per day" or "midnight census" are not applicable in planning perinatal staffing because they do not consider the dynamic nature of caring for women during labor and birth, the first few hours after delivery, the surgical deliveries, and the needs of the newborn following birth as it transitions to extrauterine life.

Promoting a Culture of Safety in Mother-Baby Units

* a revision of the midnight census to accurately reflect the needs of patients.

Stand together for safer staffing: Ramsay nurses and midwives call for safer staffing so they can deliver quality patient care

How long have we complained about midnight census? While some have made progress by collecting census more frequently, we have not successfully changed the pay practices that keep us fixated to a number that so misrepresents our work.

We can do better

* Revise the 'midnight census' because it does not accurately reflect the needs of patients.

Proposed NSWNMA Ramsay safe staffing framework

We are determined to illustrate that nurse staffing is more than staffing ratios, midnight census, and the bottom line.

Nurse staffing: using evidence to create a pathway to excellence

The claim also seeks to replace the midnight census for nursing hours calculations with a system that accurately reflects patient numbers and provides patient "specialling" in addition to mandated nursing hours or ratios.

Strong vote for safe ratios: all but one of the NSWNMA public health system branches who voted have voted to pursue our claim to extend and improve safe nurse-to-patient ratios and a 2.5% pay increase

Under these conditions, the system of budgeting nursing services by midnight census evolved.

Analyzing fluctuating unit census for timely staffing intervention

Midnight census may be an outdated way of tracking work load as so many patients have early evening d/c and midnight census does not reflect work between 7 am-7 pm when most patients come and go.

Factors Influencing Staffing Needs

Other components of the claim include guaranteed nursing staff for patient specials, a change to a better system to calculate the occupancy of a ward or unit than the current "midnight census", and protection of the nursing workforce skills mix.

Strong support for 2013 PHS claim: members have endorsed the NSWNMA Public Health System (PHS) draft claim that aims to deliver a 2.5% pay rise and the extension of ratios into new specialty areas, as well as improvements in some hospitals

Microsoft Excel's graphing and charting tool was used to develop a graph for tracking daily midnight census variations throughout the pay period (see chart at right center of Figure 3).

Use of a Nursing Labor Computer Productivity Measurement Tool

* USE OF MIDNIGHT CENSUS DATA--the NSWNMA will seek a better system than the current "midnight census" to calculate the occupancy of a ward or unit.

It's time to vote on the recommended Public Health System claim: our 2013 pay and conditions campaign in the Public Health System will seek to improve and extend the ratios won in our last campaign and a pay increase of 2.5% per year

* Since staffing decisions are made on a per-shift basis, calculating HPPD based upon midnight census provided little decision-making support about variable staffing needs over a 24-hour period.