Becker's Healthcare June 6, 2022
The nurse workforce fragility hospitals are experiencing is one result of the dysfunctional incentives for the employment of nurses in the U.S., Vox contends in a policy deep dive.
Nurses’ services are not considered billable under the fee-for-service payment model. “Patients end up charged for nurses’ work in the same way they are for housekeeping or Jell-O, as part of the cost of a hospital room,” Dylan Scott writes for Vox.
This creates an economic incentive for hospitals to keep their nursing staff – a labor cost versus revenue generator, like physicians – small. The fee-for-service payment model doesn’t incentivize hospitals to consider the link between nursing and care quality in staffing decisions.
“Until nurses are not an...
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