Comparison of costing tools in paediatric intensive care

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Nursing Economics
• Pediatric Critical Care

Background:

• Healthcare costs are a significant concern for professionals, particularly in pediatric intensive care (PIC).
• Existing costing mechanisms for PIC services require improvement, as highlighted by Department of Health reports.
• Effective tools are needed to accurately differentiate the costs associated with varying levels of patient acuity in PIC.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of a nurse-patient dependency scoring system as a differential costing tool for pediatric intensive care (PIC).
• To compare the utility of nurse-patient dependency scoring against the established Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System (TISS) in PIC settings.

Main Methods:

• Data were collected over 1,741 nursing shifts, encompassing 251 patient admissions in a PICU.
• Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to analyze the collected data.
• A modified nurse-patient dependency score was developed and compared to TISS.

Main Results:

• Findings indicate that a modified nurse-patient dependency score can serve as an effective differential costing tool in PICU.
• The proposed nurse-patient dependency score demonstrated comparable effectiveness to the Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System (TISS).
• The study suggests a viable alternative for cost allocation in pediatric intensive care.

Conclusions:

• A modified nurse-patient dependency score is a potentially effective and comparable alternative to TISS for costing PIC services.
• Implementing such a scoring system could lead to more accurate and efficient cost management in PICUs.
• Further validation may be beneficial, but initial results support its utility in healthcare economics.