TOTAL COSTS OF NURSING CARE FOR PATIENTS WITHIN PATIENT CLASSIFICATION ACUITY GROUPS WHICH SPECIFY NURSING CARE PROVIDED.
Contributors: University of Florida.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 261
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The study compared nursing costs, billed charges, nursing hours, and lengths of stay of 352 patients, on medical and surgical units at four hospitals in north central Florida. The hospitals included a non-profit teaching hospital, a government teaching hospital, a non-teaching proprietary hospital, and non-profit community hospital.

Acuity data were collected using the San Joaquin patient classification instrument, with hours of care for each level estimated by the Iowa methodology for work-sampling. The Iowa methodology was evaluated against the San Joaquin work-sampling methodology with a modified version of the Iowa methodology used in the study.

Four sets of variables were examined to explore relationships with the outcome variables: costs of nursing care, billed charges, length of stay, and total nursing hours. The variables included characteristics of patients (age, sex, payer status, and hospitalization history); nurses (experience and education); nursing care delivery systems (personnel mix and type of delivery methodology); and organizations (type, teaching status, and size). A Cobb-Douglas production function was used to estimate the outcome variables from sample data for specified lengths of stay and patient acuity levels.

Five important findings resulted from this study: (1) The modified Iowa work-sampling methodology provides nursing care hours which were highly correlated with those from the San Joaquin methodology. (2) The Cobb-Douglas production function can be used to predict or estimate hospital- and nursing-related outcomes. (3) Hospitals often cannot be identified unambiguously as high or low cost providers of care. Variables such as patient acuity and length of stay must be considered. (4) The study provided additional insight into those variables perceived by different levels of staff as influencing nursing costs and billed charges. (5) From the perspective of the hospital administrator, estimation of nursing costs might not be a cost-effective or useful endeavor, because the percentage of nursing costs in billed charges is so small. Alternatively, the nurse administrator might find estimation of nursing costs a necessity to better understand and plan for the department.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-08, Section: B, page: 3108.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, 1987.

School code: 0070.