Nursing Makes Cents: Finding the Dollars in What Nurses Do

The purpose of this program is to stimulate discussion and advocacy efforts concerning the financial contributions that nurses make to healthcare and to present a case for breaking nursing out of its traditional “room and board” bundle so that a dollar and cents value can be calculated for individual nursing services. 

 

Putting an accurate monetary value on nursing care is crucial to healthcare survival.  In an era of pay-for-performance and limits to reimbursement, nursing performance will have a substantial impact on the financial stability of a healthcare organization.  However, very few current studies have looked at how nurses impact the assets, liabilities or profit margins of a healthcare institution.

 

Certainly, research has shown that nurses make a difference in the prevention of urinary tract infections, falls, pressure ulcers, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and deep vein thrombosis among other undesirable complications of care.  Length of stay, failure to rescue, and 30-day mortality rates have also been linked to nursing interventions.  Preventative values can be projected based on the customary costs of treatment for each condition or event, but these “soft costs,” are unrealized in terms of the bottom line. 

 

Most urgently, and because nurses are traditionally one of the largest costs to a healthcare facility, nurses need to be able to support their value with the “hard” dollars and cents, not just of saved monies, but with costs that can be integrated into healthcare reimbursement systems and demonstrated to have a positive effect on an employer’s profit margins.

 

Research aimed at finding the point at which quality care, patient outcomes, nursing services, and a facility’s economic sustainability intersect would serve the best interests of all healthcare parties and allow for a continuous collaboration to maintain the loci of “best practices for all.”  Can the loci be reached without knowing the true costs associated with nursing care?  An approximation may be possible, but we will never be able to account for the variability of patient needs and the related intensity of nursing service unless we find a way to quantify what nurses do in the most accurate way achieveable.

 

Nursing Makes Cents: How to Use This Program

 

This program is divided into sections which present the current history and/or research in each of three topic areas:

 

The Journey

Nursing Costs and Reimbursement

Pay-for Performance: A Double-Edged Sword for Nursing?

 

Each section consists of a PowerPoint presentation that can be used for stakeholder’s meetings, accompanying notes, and a list of references.  Slides from each section may be mixed and matched to suit the needs of the presenter. (See below to download presentations and references.)

 

Most importantly, the existing programs may be revised and new programs developed as new research becomes available and the advocacy efforts of nurses impact the manner in which the costs of nursing care are calculated and reimbursed. 

 

It has been said that if we cannot express our value as nurses in terms of the common currency, we have no value.  We need to rise to the challenge of calculating our worth and having that worth recognized in ways that put a clearly understood “price” on the things nurses do.

 

This particular journey is not over until we put the “cents” into nursing.

 

Please direct your questions or comments to Kathleen Morris at kmorris@ohnurses.org or call 614-448-1026.

The Journey (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation)
References - The Journey (Microsoft Word Document)
Nursing Cost and Reimbursement (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation)
References - Nursing Cost and Reimbursement (Microsoft Word Document)
Pay for Performance (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation)
References - Pay for Performance (Microsoft Word Document)