Hospitals are using reimbursement funds for profit and administration while neglecting patient care and nurse staffing efforts, an opinion piece published May 30 in Health Affairs contends.
The opinion's authors are Olga Yakusheva, PhD, a professor of public health and nursing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Betty Rambur, PhD, RN, the interim dean of the nursing college at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston.
Dr. Yakusheva and Dr. Rambur said, "It is no mystery what hospitals must do to address the [nurse] staffing problem," as a majority of polled nurses have said the lack of pay increases can be a dealbreaker when accepting or leaving a job.
"Despite the glaring need to retain nurses, hospitals have long been underinvesting in nursing quality," the authors wrote, adding that hospitals facing worker strikes "have managed to muster up" enough funds to offer higher pay, so "why do they systematically deprioritize nurse staffing and work environments?" they said.
Read the full opinion here.