Rising healthcare costs and nursing shortages

NURS-6053 Module 1: Discussion – Rising healthcare costs and nursing shortages

Rising healthcare costs and nursing shortages

People are living longer lives. Living longer leads to more comorbidities. “A health condition which one may have ended someone’s life is no livable condition.” (Dinerstein, 2024) In the United States life expectancy healthcare has not caught up with the increase in life expectancy. (Dinerstein, 2024) Increase in health complexity, more chronic illness management leads to higher healthcare costs. (Amalberti, 2021) This directly affects the patients and nursing staff.

Nursing shortage has been on the rise increasing even more after the pandemic. According to the labor of statistics reports a there will be more than 3 million nurses that are needed. (Werezak, 2023) Increase in the complexity of the patients is part of the stressor along with decrease in reimbursement from insurance companies. Decreased reimbursement leads to budgets cuts and front-line nurses are the first to go at times. Also nurses wage is an issue healthcare costs which are increasing directly affects the ability to increase the pay of the nurses. (Arnold, et.al, 2023)

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Rising healthcare costs and nursing shortages directly affect my workplace setting. I worked in skilled nursing facilities. We take care for a variety of people with all different needs and walks of life. An ongoing struggle is cuts in the budget leading to decreased staff.  “personnel restructuring” (Broome, et.al, 2021) This directly leads to nurse burn out and nursing shortages.

Skilled nursing has responded to reimbursement decreases by having dedicated positions RNAC who sole focus is to ensure our facility gets credit for all the hard work. Also all high cost medications are automatically ran through a portal and if our pharmacy can provide a generic or alternative it is implemented immediately. This helps us meet budget each month results in less budget cuts or having to make up from the previous month. Also, human resources have implemented many employee appreciation programs including employee of the month, thankful Thursday nurse shout out and raises based on evaluation yearly Rising healthcare costs and nursing shortages.

In conclusion

Nursing is one of the most stressful jobs. It combines knowledge, physical labor, customer services and so much more all into one role for 8-12 hours a day. Having the added stressor of patients having more complex needs and living longer and not an increase in nursing staff can affect the nurse’s morale and work ethic. This is especially true in the skilled nursing setting. The nurse-to-patient ratio is higher than most settings and leads to nurse burn out often.

References:

Broome, M., & Marshall, E. S. (2021). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.

Amalberti, R., Vincent, C., Nicklin, W., & Braithwaite, J. (2019). Coping with more people with more illness Part 1: The nature of the challenge and the implications for safety and quality.Links to an external site.Links to an external site. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 31(2), 154–158.

Arnold, D., & Whaley, C. (2020, August 29). Who Pays for Health Care Costs? The Effects of Health Care Prices on Wages. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3657598Links to an external site.

Werezak, L. (2023, March 20). The Nursing Shortage Explained. https://nurse.org/articles/nursing-shortage/Links to an external site.

Dinerstein, C. (2024, December 17). Living Longer, Not Healthier: The Growing Gap Between Lifespan and ‘Healthspan’. https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/12/17/living-longer-not-healthier-growing-gap-between-lifespan-and-healthspan-49180