A Data-driven Approach for Evaluating Integrative Health Intervention Utilization and Outcomes in Community-based Care

Abstract

Integrative health (IH) interventions are increasingly used in conventional healthcare in a variety of settings. Approaches are needed to capture and evaluate the effectiveness of IH interventions in real-world settings. A literature review suggested that use of standardized terminologies has potential to facilitate structured IH intervention data collection for meaningful use. An examination of the Omaha System found that the Omaha System is broadly applicable to represent IH interventions and can operationalize the interventions within existing clinical datasets, such as electronic health records, for intervention evaluations. Forty-six Omaha System target terms were found to be applicable to represent IH interventions. Use of the target terms to operationalize IH interventions in an existing clinical dataset generated in community-based care enabled an in-depth data-driven analysis to examine IH intervention use. This provided novel insights into nursing IH practice. The analysis revealed that IH interventions accounted for a substantial number of interventions in community-based care and were associated with better outcomes for clients. Differing patterns of IH interventions delivered to different populations were revealed and supported the notion of intervention tailoring. This research presents an exemplar for a data-driven approach evaluating IH intervention use and outcomes using existing clinical datasets. Further research is needed to validate these findings and expand the approach to explore IH intervention use and outcomes for other populations across healthcare settings.