Optimizing staffing, quality, and cost in home healthcare nursing: theory synthesis

To propose a new theory pinpointing the optimal nurse staffing threshold delivering the maximum quality of care relative to attendant costs in home health care.

Little knowledge exists on the theoretical foundation addressing the inter-relationship among quality of care, nurse staffing, and cost.

Theory synthesis.

Cochrane Library, PubMed, CINAHL, EBSCOhost Web and Web of Science (25 February - 26 April 2013; 20 January - 22 March 2015).

Most of the existing theories/models lacked the detail necessary to explain the relationship among quality of care, nurse staffing and cost. Two notable exceptions are: 'Production Function for Staffing and Quality in Nursing Homes,' which describes an S-shaped trajectory between quality of care and nurse staffing and 'Thirty-day Survival Isoquant and Estimated Costs According to the Nurse Staff Mix,' which depicts a positive quadric relationship between nurse staffing and cost according to quality of care. A synthesis of these theories led to an innovative multi-dimensional econometric theory helping to determine the maximum quality of care for patients while simultaneously delivering nurse staffing in the most cost-effective way. The theory-driven threshold, navigated by Mathematical Programming based on the Duality Theorem in Mathematical Economics, will help nurse executives defend sufficient nurse staffing with scientific justification to ensure optimal patient care; help stakeholders set an evidence-based reasonable economical goal; and facilitate patient-centred decision-making in choosing the institution which delivers the best quality of care.

A new theory to determine the optimum nurse staffing maximizing quality of care relative to cost was proposed.