Costing nursing care: using the clinical care classification system to value nursing intervention in an acute-care setting.

The purpose of this study was to combine an established methodology for coding nursing interventions and action types using the Clinical Care Classification System with a reliable formula (relative value units) to cost nursing services. Using a flat per-diem rate to cost nursing care greatly understates the actual costs and fails to address the high levels of variability within and across units. We observed nurses performing commonly executed nursing interventions and recorded these into an electronic database with corresponding Clinical Care Classification System codes. The duration of these observations was used to calculate intervention costs using relative value unit calculation formulas. The costs of the five most commonly executed interventions were nursing care coordination/manage-refer ($2.43), nursing status report/assess-monitor ($4.22), medication treatment/perform-direct ($6.33), physical examination/assess-monitor ($3.20), and universal precautions/perform-direct ($1.96). Future studies across a variety of nursing specialties and units are needed to validate the relative value unit for Clinical Care Classification System action types developed for use with the Clinical Care Classification System nursing interventions as a method to cost nursing care.