Extraction, preparation, and presentation of patient classification-data for the benefit of management overviews

In the Free University Hospital, the nursing staff enters data daily into the computerized patient classification system. The computer calculates and gives a retrospective overview of the patient workload per day and per nursing unit. The present system does not comply with the information needs of the middle and higher management. This is due to differences in the manner of working on the various nursing units. For these reasons, the patient classification data was extracted from the central HIS database and copied to a PC environment. Here, the data was further ordered and processed to produce overviews for the nursing management. This was done by developing a user friendly interface with the spreadsheet program QuattroPro.