Health Affairs May 30, 2023
Recent revelations of systemic staffing issues and dangerously poor quality of care at two of the nations’ largest health systems, HCA and Ascension, have sparked another round of public outcry about hospitals putting profits over patients. However, much of the public discourse around the hospitals’ purportedly unethical behaviors misses an important nuance—namely, that hospitals’ staffing decisions are shaped by a complex system of economic and regulatory constraints created and overseen by governmental payment policies and largely replicated by private payers. Improving hospitals’ behavior will require changing the policies that currently allow—and even inadvertently incentivize—hospitals to increase their operating margins through inadequate staffing.
Hospitals Have Not Prioritized Investments In Nursing Quality
An abundance of data shows that hospitals across the country...
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