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A Comparative Analysis Of Prospective Nursing Patient Classification And Retrospective Nursing Patient Classification, Dana Larmore Hlusko

Nursing Theses & Dissertations

Nursing patient classification systems have been in use in some form since Florence Nightingale first arranged her patients in wards (Giovanetti, 1978). Prospective classification systems which have been implemented in hospitals now generate billing information, staff budgets and long-range financial forecasts (Giovanetti, 1978; Alward, 1983; Edwardson and Giovanetti, 1987). Quantitative analysis using at-test indicated a significant difference in mean acuity scores in the prospective and retrospective data which pointed to a retrospective system as being more appropriate for billing, budgeting and finance decisions. Spearman's correlation analysis did not demonstrate a strong correlation between any indicators or with total acuity. Several …