Nursing dependency and the costs of nursing care

The observed costs of nursing care for individual patients are compared with their stated dependency levels. The average costs of the dependency groups rise with dependency, but there are very large overlaps between the distributions. The derivation of a systematic method for allocating extra staff to wards illustrates the difficulty in matching staff supplied to labour demanded, especially in view of the small size of wards as management units. Nurses are warned against the consequences of cost-inefficiency.