VICTORIA, Australia, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- An Australian study suggests hospitals could save money and improve patient care by assigning nurses according to patient needs, instead of by ratios.
Researchers at Monash University in Victoria noted many hospitals worldwide use a range of ratio systems, but Victoria is the only state in Australia that uses mandated ratios to allocate nurses in public hospitals.
Dr. Virginia Plummer from the university's School of Nursing and Midwifery studied nearly two million nursing hours in Australia and overseas. She found TrendCare -- an Australian computer system that allocates nurses across wards depending on patient needs -- better met the needs of hospitals.
Mandated nurse-patient ratios were introduced to Victorian public hospitals five years ago as one of several strategies to recruit nurses. But Plummer found TrendCare predicts nursing care requirements with greater accuracy than ratios for all hospital settings in Australia and New Zealand.
The study also found similar results in several Thai hospitals.
