The American Nurses Association and other nursing organizations have released what they call a "first-of-its-kind study" showing the economic value of nursing.
The study shows that when nurse staffing levels are increased, a patient's risk of complications and his or her hospital length of stay decrease, resulting in medical costs savings, improved national productivity and lives saved.
Estimates from the study suggest that adding 133,000 RNs to the acute care hospital workforce would save 5,900 lives per year.
The study, released Dec. 24 and conducted by the Lewin Group, estimates medical savings at $6.1 billion, or $46,000 per additional RN per year. Combining medical savings with increased productivity, the partial estimates of economic value averages $57,700 for each of the additional 133,000 RNs.
The study also shows that the productivity value of total deaths averted is equivalent to more than $1.3 billion per year, or about $9,900 per additional RN per year. Hospitals that add nurses would decrease hospital days by 3.6 million. More rapid patient recovery translates into increased national productivity, conservatively estimated at $231 million per year.
The study was supported by grants from Nursing's Agenda for the Future, the ANA and a coalition of 85 nursing organizations, including the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the Oncology Nursing Society and the American Organization of Nurse Executives.
The research, first proposed in 2003 and now published in the journal Medical Care, analyzed several years' worth of data on the correlation between patient outcomes and nurse staffing levels, according to ANA President Rebecca Patton.
"Nurses are a vital component to the healthcare system," she said. "This nursing-funded study provides a model that shows how nurses affect the delivery of cost-effective, high quality care and prevent adverse events."
The research culled findings from 28 different studies that analyzed the relationship between higher registered nurse staffing and several patient outcomes: reduced hospital-based mortality, hospital-acquired pneumonia, unplanned extubation, failure to rescue, nosocomial bloodstream infections and length of stay.
According to the ANA, the findings suggest significant policy related issues. First and foremost, healthcare facilities cannot realize the full economic value of professional nursing due to current reimbursement systems. Additionally, the economic value of nursing is "greater for payers than for individual healthcare facilities."