Protecting the Public Through the National Practitioner Data Bank and Nursys® Compliance: An Exploratory Analysis

Introduction: The National Practitioner Data Bank and Nursys (R) are important mechanisms for protecting the public against practitioners who pose a risk. Aims: To assess the level of performance associated with uploading final board of nursing (BON) actions to Nursys and the National Practitioner Data Bank to determine whether the BON governance model or usage of the National Council of State Boards of Nursing's (NCSBN's) agent service has an effect on performance against the 30-day federal reporting standard and the NCSBN-American National Standards Institute 15-day reporting standard. Method: A secondary analysis of data relating to completed BON actions submitted to the Nursys database was conducted for all entries held by NCSBN for 2013 to 2015. Results: A substantial number of BONs are not compliant with the 30-day federal reporting standard. BONs with an independent governance structure performed better than those with an umbrella arrangement (Mann Whitney U test of data for years 2013, 2014, and 2015, z = -2.726, -2.180, and -2.263, with p = .006, .029, .024, respectively). Conclusion: The use of routine collected data shows potential for measuring the effect of improvement strategies in achieving the 30-day federal standard and the 15-day NCSBN-American National Standards Institute standard. Umbrella BONs are generally less effective than independent BONs in meeting the 30-day federal standard and thus place the public at increased risk. Some BONs have room for performance improvement.