Review of Georgia Nursing Relicensure Data Issue 2012- Present
Data about the nursing workforce in Georgia are collected on a volunteer basis during relicensure by the State Board of Nursing. The response rate had historically been around 14%, with minimum information collected and not the information asked for in the National Minimum Data Set. In 2012, the State of Georgia provided $27,000 to revise the RN relicensure form to include the information on the National Minimum Data Set and streamline the survey form to improve collection rates during the 2013 relicensure cycle. At the conclusion of the 2013 relicensure process, preliminary excel files of the data produced file sets with 60,544 returned surveys however only five data fields were reported indicating there was a major issue with the extraction of the data. Since February, 2013, the SOS’s office, the Georgia Board of Nursing (GBON) and the Georgia Nursing Leadership Coalition (GNLC) have been aware of the problem with the relicensure data. No data have been received during 2013 or as of December 8 th 2014. In August, 2014, direct phone calls were made to Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office to arrange a face to face meeting with him to discuss the lack of progress with analysis of the nursing data. Dr. Lisa Eichelberger, Co-Chair of the GNLC and Dean of the College of Health, Clayton State University, had her assistant begin calling the SOS office to request a meeting every three business days with no success until October, 2014 when a meeting was arranged with Lisa Eichelberger, GNLC, Tim Fleming, Deputy, Sect. of State, Mr. Ben Robinson, Georgia BOR, Jim Flowers, Assistant to President, Clayton State University, Nur Rajwany NurSYS, National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), Sandy Rhodes, NCSBN, NurSYS, Lisa Durden, Director, Licensing Board, SOS, Merritt Beaver, SOS, Information Technology. We met and agreed that we needed to include staff from Systems Automation Company at our next meeting which would be held in two weeks. We met in two weeks in a phone meeting to discuss the problem with the extraction, uploading and storage of nursing data. Charles Rubin from System Automation (SA) was present as well as Nur and Sandy, the staff from NSCBN, Jim Cleghorn, Lisa Eichelberger and SOS staff members. The meeting was very productive and revealing and the SOS was made aware that SA had been hired by NCSBN to assist GA SOS in the extraction and uploading of data. We were made aware that a major problem exists with the data in 2013. The server holding the data crashed and there is a concern that some of the data may have been lost. Also, it was discussed that due to antiquated computer systems at the GA SOS office, due to the size of our data, the running of our data which should take hours, takes days. That data group continued to meet bi-monthly via telephone and email each other to monitor progress with the data and to discuss issues with the ongoing extraction problems for approximately two months and continues to email each other as necessary to update each other on the progress of the data extraction. NCSBN agreed to store Georgia’s data since Georgia stated they did not have the resources to store Georgia’s data long term for Georgia. They have continued to be delays and no data has been delivered to date. As of December 8 th 2014, NCSBN has notified us that they are in receipt of the extracted data from SA and the SOS office and NCSBN has analyzed that data and confirmed the data collection date is within the GA renewal cycles and are in the process of running the reports for us. They anticipate having them completed by
December 13th 2014 however they have additional questions about the files that first must be answered by SA and SOS office before NCSBN can proceed. Jim Cleghorn at GBON has promised to release copies of the reports about nurses in Georgia to the cochairs of the GNLC as soon as reports are generated by NCSBN.
Prepared by Lisa Eichelberger – December 8th 2014