Soliman F
School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.
J Med Syst. 1998 Aug;22(4):225-36. doi: 10.1023/a:1022609717031.
One of the most challenging decisions in resource allocations in hospitals is: how to allocate nursing duties on the basis of patients' needs? Patient Dependency Systems, in different forms, can be used to provide information for staffing decisions and budgetary developments. That is why Patient Dependency Systems are emerging as powerful tools in hospital management. It is anticipated that their use will grow, as hospitals everywhere come under pressure to reduce cost and improve the delivery and quality of health care to patients. Experience has shown that manual Patient Dependency Systems lack the ability to process and provide information fast enough to handle crisis situations. In addition, manual calculations are inefficient and are not free from human errors. However, the utilization of current advances in computing technology can overcome these disadvantages. Patient Dependency Systems are suitable for automation since their essence is too complex to handle manually. Furthermore, it is essential to automate the Patient Dependency Systems because of their critical role and their inherent complexity. In this paper, the automation of Patient Dependency Systems is presented. The development of Patient Dependency Automated Systems is shown to provide reliable and valid methods for evaluating the needs of patients in terms of the nursing effort required.