Search

Objective: Clinical care ratios are used to quantify and benchmark the activity of allied health professionals. This study aims to review previous recommendations and identify what variables may influence them. Method: Data was collected from the core allied health professions (audiology, nutrition and dietetics, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, podiatry, prosthetics and orthotics, psychology, social work and speech pathology) across eight Australian hospitals. Data for 113 staff who were casual or from smaller professions (audiology, podiatry, prosthetics and orthotics and psychology) were excluded due to insufficient numbers for analysis. The remaining data were analysed according to profession, seniority (tiers 1, 2 and 3) and employment status (permanent versus casual staff). A two-way ANOVA was performed to assess the association of clinical care ratios with tier, profession, employment status and gender. Results: Data from 1246 staff from the five larger professions at participating hospitals were analysed. There were no interactions between profession and gender (P = 0.185) or employment status (P = 0.412). The relationship between clinical care ratio and profession was modified by tier (interaction term, P = 0.014), meaning that differences in clinical care ratios between professions depended on the tier. Conclusion: This research has confirmed that clinical care ratios are a useful tool in workload management and determining staffing levels for allied health professionals. The recommendations from this research provide a starting point that can be finessed with reference to profession, model of care, workforce structure, governance and training requirements. This will lead to increased staff wellbeing and improved patient outcomes. What is known about this topic? Clinical care ratios are a useful tool to quantify, monitor and compare workloads of allied health professionals. What does this paper add? This paper confirms that clinical care ratios are a useful workforce planning tool and that when developing roles and models of care, clinical care ratios need to be incorporated into staffing requests and considered as part of workload management tools. What are the implications for practitioners? Clinical care ratios enable the quantification and benchmarking of direct and clinical support activity components of a workload and can be used when planning new services and reviewing current services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Clinical care ratios (CCRs) are a useful tool that can be used to quantify and benchmark the clinical and non-clinical workloads of allied health professionals. The purpose of this study was to determine if CCRs are influenced by level of seniority, type of role or profession. This will provide meaningful information for allied health service managers to better manage service demand and capacity. Method. Data was collected from 2036 allied health professionals from five professions across 11 Australian tertiary hospitals. Mean (95% confidence intervals) CCRs were calculated according to profession, seniority and role type. A two-way ANOVA was performed to assess the association of CCRs (dependent variable) with seniority level and profession (independent variables). Post-hoc pairwise comparisons identified where significant main or interaction effects occurred (a = 0.05). Results. Significant main effects for seniority level and profession were identified (P < 0.05), but there was no interaction effect. Post-hoc comparisons revealed significant differences between all tier combinations (P < 0.05) with more senior staff having the lowest CCRs. Conclusion. The direct and non-direct clinical components of the allied health professional's workload can be quantified and benchmarked with like roles and according to seniority. The benchmarked CCRs for predominantly clinical roles will enable managers to compare and evaluate like roles and modify non-direct clinical components according to seniority and discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]