A new strategy for cost-effective care: clinical dietetic staffing by diagnosis.

Conventional methods for measuring and justifying appropriate clinical dietetic staffing are enhanced by linking actual patient needs for nutrition care to clinical dietetic staffing levels. Nutrition care is categorized into basic and in-depth activities. Basic care is correlated to active diet orders and in-depth care to patient diagnoses. Data collection, including time studies, is necessary to extrapolate individual patient requirements for basic and in-depth nutrition care to total requirements characteristic of a given clinical setting. Applying a mathematical formula to data collected, final calculation of total labor requirements is achieved. This correlation of staffing to patient requirements for nutrition care has been responded to favorably by hospital administration. Further challenges lie in dietetic protocol development, which should contribute to consistently high-quality, cost-effective nutrition care.