A safe staffing policy could prevent deaths, produce savings to help fund improved staffing
A new study from Penn’s School of Nursing finds that safer nurse staffing levels in Pennsylvania hospitals could prevent thousands of deaths each year.
2 min. read
A new study published in Medical Care, led by researchers from Penn Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR), finds that safer nurse staffing levels in Pennsylvania hospitals could prevent thousands of deaths each year while improving care, and provide savings that could finance better staffing.
The findings provide timely evidence amidst renewed interest in hospital minimum nurse staffing requirements in Pennsylvania. Using recent data from Pennsylvania nurses and patients, the study analyzes outcomes for more than 547,000 patients and nearly 2,800 nurses across 132 hospitals statewide. Higher nurse workloads are consistently associated with worse patient outcomes. Each additional patient assigned to a nurse is associated with higher odds of patient death within 30 days, higher odds of hospital readmission, and significantly longer hospital stays.
“Concerns about nurse shortages or impacts on rural hospitals are often raised in staffing discussions,” says lead author Jane Muir, assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Health and CHOPR senior fellow. “Our findings show that nurses working in hospitals with better staffing report less burnout and turnover, and that currently rural hospitals in Pennsylvania are not staffed less favorably than other hospitals.”
The study projects that implementing safer staffing ratios could have major statewide benefits, including up to 3,040 hospital deaths prevented annually, more than 2,100 hospital readmissions avoided, and over 77,000 hospital days avoided as a result of shorter length of stay associated with improved nurse staffing.
The financial implications are substantial, with an estimated $66 million in savings from reduced nurse turnover and $239 million in savings from shorter hospital stays that could offset the cost of hiring additional nurses and result in savings for state-funded hospital care.
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