Measuring nursing workload in an outpatient department.

Estimating outpatient nursing workload on the basis of visit volume loses validity as utilization of services by patients with complex nursing needs increases. In response to this challenge, nursing administrators at all levels must maintain an awareness of new methods to measure and predict outpatient nursing workload. Accurate quantification of the workload is a valuable tool in justifying costs, particularly in the face of health care regulation, and in developing billing systems that reflect actual nursing practice. Using the concept of relative value units (RVU), the authors describe a nursing workload measurement system developed in the outpatient department of a regional cancer center.