In the absence of a detailed security staffing formula applicable to the corporation's health care system in the current literature, the corporation undertook its own feasibility study by assessing the security operations used at each facility, surveying security directors and various hospital associations, interviewing hospital personnel and users, analyzing reports, and collecting workload volumes. The study identified 11 staffing factors to use in calculating the security manhours required at a given health care institution. The factors are patient population profile, nonpatient profile, vehicle parking, land area, building profile, environmental profile, criminal offense indices, order maintenance, security posts, concomitant functions, and special situations. From these factors, the security manager can calculate the optimal siting of patrol posts to achieve security goals and the manhours required to accomplish the defined security mission. Other functions that can be calculated from the factors include nonscheduled temporary activities, the frequency of patrol, the desired response time, and the conversion of required manhours to a full-time staffing requirement. Appended study materials and instruments.