The Healthcare Economic Issue Paper

The Healthcare Economic Issue Paper

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Health care economics has the potential to affect each of us either personally or professionally. This impact can be viewed from a health economics point-of-view (where we discuss the value of health care and its efficiency) or it can examine how health care is financed (focus on how health care is funded). Health economics and health care funding have the potential to influence health care outcomes in a variety of ways. The bulleted list below outlines topics and health care issues that many institutions encounter. Organizations often have to implement strategies or initiatives to resolve or improve these issues and create positive patient and institution outcomes. The Healthcare Economic Issue Paper

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The fiscal nurse staffing ramifications ensure that healthcare facilities offer top-notch patient services and can effectively allocate resources despite the changing healthcare environment. Hence, it is necessary for hiring managers to evaluate the existing complexities related to nursing workforce management, including these complexities’ long-term effects and financial implications on care quality. The paper will describe health economic issue and their impact on the specific population and the rationale for selecting the healthcare economic issue. Also, the paper will assess ways the healthcare issue influences our healthcare organization and the gap that causes the need to address the issue.

Health Economic Issue and Its Impact on the Specific Population

The health economic issue selected is inadequate nurse staffing in healthcare organizations. Nationally, most healthcare organizations face challenges when assessing new applicants for the open nursing positions caused by the effects of the undeniable nursing shortage (Brooks Carthon et al., 2020). Most researchers predict that the nurse shortage issue will worsen by 2030 considering that approximately one million nurses will retire and leave the profession. Such factors frustrate healthcare executives when recruiting nurses since the nurses’ retiring surge has contributed greatly to the current nursing shortage (Brooks Carthon et al., 2020)The Healthcare Economic Issue Paper. The economic issue related to inadequate nurse staffing revolves around the intensifying older citizens’ healthcare demand increases and early retirement. The impact of retiring nurses is that they have increased healthcare workers stress at work, resulting in burnout, thus contributing to the high turnover rates without proper replacement. Also, the growing body of evidence shows that acute care hospitals experiencing inadequate nurse staffing result in various adverse effects like medication errors, patient falls, in-hospital mortality, and hospital-acquired infections (Griffiths et al., 2020). The hypothesis is that healthcare organizations with inadequate staffing fail to achieve patient surveillance quality since nurses have limited time to spend with the patients when giving direct care. Hence, insufficient staffing rations care time and, in most cases, causes missed care that affects overall patient outcomes. That explains why healthcare organizations with inadequate staffing have higher case mortality and morbidity rates.

The Rationale for Selecting The Healthcare Economic Issue

The main reason for selecting inadequate staffing as a healthcare economic issue is its effect on hospitals’ finances and the inability of these hospitals to meet the Triple Aim requirements. According to Han et al. (2021), hospitals struggle to meet the nurses’ demand and implement quality improvement projects to optimize care and increase positive patient outcomes. That is because the recruiting process has become competitive and healthcare facilities have to increase these nurses’ wages to meet the demands of healthcare services. As a result, these hospitals are now prompted to offer the nurses better benefits, sign-on bonuses, and double their hourly pay, unlike the initial wage payment, to prevent high turnover. For instance, since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, most hospitals in the United States have paid nurses $100-$150 hourly to compensate for the extreme demand for nursing professionals (Han et al., 2021)The Healthcare Economic Issue Paper. Such factors hinder the healthcare organization’s ability to meet the patients needs and preferences, particularly in meeting the Triple Aim requirements that enhance the patient and nurse populations’ overall well-being.

Ways The Healthcare Issue Influences Our Healthcare Organization

In our healthcare organization, the issue of inadequate staffing has affected the nurse-to-patient ratios. That is because one key burnout driver among nurses is related to the chronic stress contributed by patient overload (Griffiths et al., 2020). For instance, most nurses in our healthcare organization attend to many patients during their shifts, thus making it hard for them to meet all the patient’s needs and preferences. Consequently, these nurses find it hard to engage in patient surveillance, thus leading to increased cases of missed care and an inability to maintain optimal care outcomes (Han et al., 2021). For instance, there has been an increase in patient falls, leading to increased hospital stays and readmissions, affecting the healthcare reimbursement program. Also, due to the increased wages nurses demand, most healthcare organizations have poor nurse-to-patient ratios since most healthcare administrators are trying to leverage costs by having fewer nurse employees (Han et al., 2021). Such cases leave existing nurses with no option apart from sticking with the plan, which leads to serious consequences for the nurses and patient population, particularly on overall patient outcomes and increased dissatisfaction levels.

The Gap That Causes the Need to Address the Issue

The gap contributing to the need to address inadequate staffing is that most hospitals have increased overtime pay to fill the insufficient nurses’ gap throughout the shifts. Also, insufficient staffing has contributed to increased hospital stays and the likelihood of patient readmission cases related to hospital-acquired infections and complications, affecting the patients and the healthcare organization’s sustainability and competitiveness (Griffiths et al., 2020)The Healthcare Economic Issue Paper. Another gap related to inadequate staffing is its contribution towards causing the nursing workforce to lose passion for nursing due to work overload, which makes most of them unable to balance their professional and personal lives. Such circumstances have reduced these nurses’ productivity and contributed to the increased medical errors, which risk the patients’ well-being and safety. Thus, there is a need to address comprehensively to enhance patient and nursing workforce satisfaction levels and achieve optimal care.

Conclusion

The main areas addressed by the paper are describing an economic issue, which, in this case, has been inadequate staffing and its impact on the specific population, and the rationale for selecting the healthcare economic issue. Also, the paper has assessed ways the healthcare issue influences our healthcare organization and the gap that causes the need to address the issue. Generally, inadequate staffing has led to many healthcare organizations failing to meet optimal patient outcomes since they focus on meeting the existing nurses’ demands to prevent them from leaving. Hence, inadequate staffing in nursing serves as an economic healthcare issue since healthcare facilities must leverage their finances to meet the risky demand for nurses.

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References

Brooks Carthon, J. M., Hatfield, L., Brom, H., Houton, M., Kelly-Hellyer, E., Schlak, A., & Aiken, L. H. (2020). System-Level Improvements in Work Environments Lead to Lower Nurse Burnout and Higher Patient Satisfaction. Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 36(1), 7–13. https://doi.org/10.1097/ncq.0000000000000475

Griffiths, P., Saville, C., Ball, J., Jones, J., Pattison, N., & Monks, T. (2020). Nursing workload, Nurse Staffing Methodologies & Tools: a systematic scoping review & discussion. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 103(1), 103487. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.103487

Han, X., Pittman, P., & Barnow, B. (2021). Alternative Approaches to Ensuring Adequate Nurse Staffing. Medical Care, 59(Suppl 5), S463–S470. https://doi.org/10.1097/mlr.0000000000001614 The Healthcare Economic Issue Paper