Abstract
Nursing has increasingly found itself in the position of having to show that it makes a positive and important impact on health care. Two initiatives have surfaced that have potential for indicating the contribution of nursing to health care. One of these is the American Nurses Association's Report Card for Acute Care. The other is the Nursing Intervention Project's information system model. In this article, these initiatives are analyzed in terms of their content and potential for providing a framework for the assessment and evaluation of the quality of nursing care services. Recommendations for policy changes are made for the collection of data to ensure that standards of excellence are met during this most challenging era of accountability.