Nursing resource definition in DRGs. RIMS/Nursing Acuity Project Group.

The use of traditional nurse-specific patient classification/acuity systems for staffing are obsolete as they do not interact with other elements of hospital information systems (HIS). In the face of rapidly advancing managed care penetration the challenge for nursing has become the capability to measure and manage cost, quality, and outcomes by integrating nursing resource information into the standard HIS spawned by DRGs. Earlier efforts to quantify nursing relative intensity measures and correlate them with DRGs were not successful. New health care software technology (as well as combined financial and clinical department support) can now provide integrated clinical information and financial information by DRG for each patient's clinical record. Expert clinician medical-surgical and ICU nursing panels were empowered to evaluate and arrive at group consensus placing designated DRGs in clusters according to their average nursing care resource requirements. The method was tested and validated.