"Practice Pearls"
martin...@gmail.com
A few months ago, I posted on the Listserv asking for volunteers in practice settings to write 3-5 sentences about an activity, idea, or change that they started or continue because it improves their use of the Omaha System, i.e. a Practice Pearl! The following 7 authors submitted awesome evidence and outcome based, data-driven, quality focused, income generating, creative, useful, practical, and replicable examples! I love every one of these diverse jewels AND hope you will, too! Note:
>>The authors were very generous and shared their email addresses. Please consider using the Subject Line, Practice Pearls, and sending emails of congratulations AND inquiries directly to them. What additional details would you like to know that they couldn’t include in such short Pearls? When you send requests to authors, remember that they are very busy, just like you.
>>What can you: Replicate in your practice setting? Discuss with your EHR vendor, another provider, a funder, or? Incorporate in your teaching strategies? Encourage your community partners, faculty colleagues, and students to consider?
>>The Pearls are listed in alphabetical order by the first initial of the author’s last name.
1. We have used the Omaha System in Carlton County since 2010. We have hosted Omaha System Basic Workshops with Karen Martin so our staff and others in the region could learn how to properly and reliably use the Omaha System. We place a priority on sending our staff who are direct users to refreshers and our other staff who support users. I attended the 2025 workshop because it had been years since I attended the last workshop, I wanted to interact with other participants, and I want to consider new ways to implement the Omaha System in Carlton County and actually use our rich clinical data.
Joanne Erspamer, MPH
Assistant Public Health Director
Carlton County Public Health and Human Services
Cloquet, Minnesota
joanne....@carltoncountymn.gov
2. I am a nurse and CEO of a home-care agency in Japan. My practice, education, research, and IT colleagues and I created an organization, Omaha System Japan in 2016; the official Japanese version of the Omaha System; and the Japanese version of the Omaha System book. We provide the Omaha System to local home-visit nursing software providers. We are excited to share that we’ve just partnered with one of the biggest players in the industry here. We remain committed to expanding the use of the Omaha System across Japan.
Taiki Iwamoto, RN, PHN, CNS
CEO
WyL Inc.
Tokyo, Japan
3. Although the Omaha System was first implemented in Dutch community health practice almost 50 years ago, we have seen a growing adoption of the Omaha System in nursing homes and residential care facilities in recent years. Healthcare professionals increasingly recognize the importance of reusing data and reducing duplicate documentation. By using the Omaha System across care settings, client information can seamlessly follow the individual as they transition from home care to residential care. In the summer of 2026, we will share the results of our exploration of Omaha System use in residential long-term care settings. Our findings will highlight what this means for evolving perspectives on housing, well-being, and person-centered care, and how a standardized classification system can support these developments.
Rianneke Mulder, BScN, former RN, Consultant
Foundation of Omaha System Support
Utrecht, The Netherlands
4. I have used the Omaha System for the past 25 years. During the past six months, my colleagues and I reviewed ways to increase efficiency of our electronic health record system; we decided we needed to improve our pathways. Pathways are a standardized roadmap that use the Omaha System to outline the expected care and interventions for a specific theme or procedure. Our new pathway for potential rabies exposure has simplified and made our documentation more efficient to generate data and track types of exposures. To provide the best care possible, it is important to discuss more effective ways to use the Omaha System as a team and not get stuck in bad routines.
Angie Rhum, RN
Henry County Public Health Nurse
Mount Pleasant, Iowa
ar...@henrycountyiowa.us
5. We have been working with Champ Software support staff since February 2026 to create reports for our Nurse Home and Community Visiting program “Growing Families” that allow us to pull and collate data across client detail, client activities, charting, and pathway pages. These reports allow us to provide a comprehensive description for our year-end reporting requirements about the full reach and impact of our service provision with a just few mouse clicks. Prior to creating these reports, our nursing staff had to tally information by hand across all of their clients charts to create, at best, an estimate for the annual reports. These and additional reports are shared with our County Council, county Board of Health, and Washington State Department of Health to garner support and continued funding.
Stephane S. Stookey, RN, BSN, Lead Public Health Nurse III
San Juan County Health & Community Services-Disease Prevention & Environmental Health
Friday Harbor, Washington
6. Approximately six months ago, I became aware of a feature within our EHR that is based on the Omaha System. This feature is designed to improve the allocation of administrative staff time across funding sources. As funding sources and revenue for client care continue to decline, I decided to begin using this tool and presented examples of its capabilities to our Board. The response from both the Board and staff was very positive. I plan to continue using this feature and to explore additional EHR capabilities for analyzing financial and clinical data; my goals are to strengthen communication and enhance the services we provide to the residents of our county.
Jennifer Sumpter RN, BSN
Executive Director
Webster County Health Department
Fort Dodge, Iowa
jennifer...@webstercountyia.gov
7. The structured Omaha System within Nightingale Notes helps us analyze social determinants of health (SDOH) trends successfully across families served in our three-county northeast Minnesota home visiting programs. We developed pathways that make it very easy to build reports. Home visitors code the Omaha System consistently across the region so we can aggregate the data elements, examining not only the prevalence of specific social needs but also relationships between social determinants, care coordination efforts, and family outcomes over time. From an operational perspective, this type of structured SDOH analysis has significant implications for public health planning, resource prioritization, quality improvement initiatives, grant reporting, and cross-sector collaboration.
Spoorthy Uddurhally, MBBS, MBA (Rural Health), MS-HIM
Regional Child and Family Well being Program Manager
Duluth, Minnesota
uddur...@communityhealthboard.org
Some of these authors have published, are considering publishing, or sharing their stories in various ways. I would be delighted if all 7 share in more detail! That is the best way to “communicate and collaborate”, to spread the word about their successes and help others.
This fall, I hope to post a similar group of Omaha System jewels authored by educators and researchers! For those of you in academia, start thinking about volunteering to write!
ENJOY!!!!!!!
___________________________________
Karen S. Martin, RN, MSN, FHIMSS, FAAN
Health Care Consultant
Martin Associates
5711 N. 167th Ave. Circle
Omaha, NE 68116
www.healthconnectionspress.com