Meter to test volume ratio

If you're trying to decide on an appropriate number of glucometers, I wouldn't use patient or test volumes. In our facility, each unit has very different needs. Some units have fewer patients and less testing, but need more glucometers than units with more patients and testing. There's a lot of factors to consider; like two of our units resulting lots of pregnancy testing on our glucometers in addition to glucoses. Or the layout of different units requiring extra glucometers to avoid wasted staff hours walking all over looking for that one glucometer on their unit. I do wonder if anyone has calculated something like what you are asking, though. Not sure how someone would go about that...

When I oversaw glucometer change/implementation at our facility a few years ago, I spoke with each manager and some staff in each unit in order to figure out exactly how many we needed. It was a lot of work, but I'm glad I did; we needed many more than we had. Be sure to include extras for your clinical educators, POCC, and also extras on hand for when staff break/bloody up the meters so that they aren't short while waiting on a replacement.