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With the Diagnosis Related Groups' (DRGS) Classification method impending for all Australian Health Care Services, it is imperative that the nursing care of patients is quantified. The system was implemented in 1983 in the United States of America with no recognition of the varied nature of nursing input into the care of patients in different diagnostic groups.
St. Vincent's Hospital is one of eight Sydney Metropolitan Teaching Hospitals currently involved in a major research project to determine nursing weights for patients in N.S.W. Hospitals. In order to assign accurate and reliable nursing weights, a reliable Patient Dependency System is required.
The Patient Assessment Information System (PAIS) in use at St. Vincent's Hospital until May 1992 was ward-based, with no way of providing a cumulative total for each patient's length of stay. A new PAIS computer programme, was developed at St. Vincent's Hospital through late 1991 and early 1992, which addresses this problem and links to the ATS and the PMI, so that a DRG "Grouper" can incorporate the nursing weight into the overall DRG weight for each inpatient at SVH.
Information presented will provide an overview of the St. Vincent's Hospital contribution of providing nursing weights for DRGS, using the PAIS system.
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