Can trauma scoring systems predict the nursing costs of trauma care?

Scoring systems are presently employed to triage trauma patients to the appropriate facilities for care. Trauma patients need highly technical nursing skills, which are costly. Five scoring systems, the Glasgow Coma Score (GCS), Trauma Score (TS), Revised Trauma Score (RTS), CRAMS Scale, and Injury Severity Scale (ISS) were compared with an automated nursing acuity system at a Level I trauma center to determine if the trauma scores could also be used to predict the nursing costs of 448 trauma care patients who were aeromedically transported. One-way analysis of variance was performed with a resultant significant F test (p ? 0.000) for each of the five scoring systems. Bartlett and Cochran's tests checked homogeneity of variance. Student-Newman-Keuls posthoc tests showed additional differences within each scoring system. The GCS, TS, TS, CRAMS, and ISS can all predict nursing costs for trauma care.