Best Practices for Configuring Level of Care Groups

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Best Practices for Configuring Level of Care Groups

When attempting to determine appropriate assignment of profiles and locations to Level of Care groups, one best practice is to use something similar to the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) classification system to establish a consistent assignment methodology.

The NDNQI classification system identifies the unit type and the patient population type for each profile. Once you have determined that a profile with a specific patient population and unit type should be routed to a specific Level of Care group, all other profiles with identical patient populations and unit types should route to that Level of Care group as well, leaving no room for subjective consideration. For example, once an organization has determined that a location with a patient population of Adult in-patient and a unit type of Skilled Nursing is associated with the Routine Level of Care Group, any other profiles classified with the same population and unit type should be routed to the Routine Level of Care group without question.

The following table displays a few examples of how to determine Level of Care group assignment. You may want to list all your organization locations in a table similar to this and emulate this approach as you establish your own assignment methodology.

Profile Name	Location	Population	Unit Type Adult	Unit Type Pediatric	Level of Care Group
Cardiac Telemetry	2N	Adult In-patient	Step-Down - Adult		INT
Medical-GI-Renal	3N	Adult In-patient	Medical - Adult		ROUT
CCU Coronary Care Unit	CCU	Adult In-patient	Critical Care - Adult		CC
CVICU Cardio Surgical	CVSU	Adult In-patient	Critical Care - Adult		CC
CV Step-down	CV Step-down	Adult In-patient	Step-Down - Adult		INT
Labor and Delivery	1NW	Adult In-patient	Obstetrics		ROUT
Medical ICU	MICU	Adult In-patient	Critical Care - Adult		CC
NICU	NICU	Neonate		Level III/IV neonatal critical care CC	CC

Two other best practices are:

Establishing conventions for naming and abbreviating Level of Care groups to ensure organization-wide consistency. This avoids confusion when analyzing Level of Care data.
When multiple facilities each have the same Level of Care groups identified, make sure that the Care Level Values remain largely consistent as well.