High Healthcare Demand and RN Shortages as a Health Care Economic Issue

High Healthcare Demand and RN Shortages as a Health Care Economic Issue

Name

Address

City, State,

ZIP Code

 

Date:_______

 

The Honorable Congressman Anthony D’Esposito

1508 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, DC  20515

Phone: (202) 225-5516

 

Dear Congressman D’Esposito,

High Healthcare Demand and RN Shortages as a Health Care Economic Issue

My name is Trixie Santos. I am from Oceanside, New York. I am a nurse currently pursuing my master’s level studies as a practitioner. I am writing to sound alarm about the current health economic issue of increasing demand for healthcare services and a significant shortage of registered nurses (RNs). New York, including the region of Oceanside, faces a rising number of people living with chronic conditions, including the young and the old. At the same time, the supply of nurses has continued to drop and is unable to meet the current demand. Data shows that New York alone will face a shortage of 40,000 nurses by 2030. Out of observation and experience, healthcare facilities are struggling to meet current demand. Consequently, New York constituents feel the negative impact of the shortage of RNs—they experience longer waits to access health services, which, due to the low levels of nursing staff, are compromised in both quality and safety. In addition, the costs of care keep rising, with more access disparities being experienced.

Positive and Negative Outcomes of Addressing and Not Addressing the Issue

Addressing the RN shortage will significantly impact the health outcomes for the people of Oceanside. It will ease the pressure on nurses and reduce their intention to leave the practice. It will also enable them to deliver adequate care to patients with notable positive health outcomes at the population level. It will also reduce the expenses incurred by hospitals during recruitment, which can support the redirection of such funds to other quality improvement projects with an impact on the overall quality, safety, and equitable access to care for all constituents. However, failure to address the issue will further lead to its exacerbation, leading to more nurses leaving due to continued burnout, patients experiencing further delays in care, compromised quality and safety of care, and worsening of the issue of chronic conditions.

Evidence on the Addressing the Issue

The experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and current data and evidence clearly highlight the issue of RN shortages and its impact and support proposed changes and solutions. For instance, nursing shortages are linked to increased workload and nurse burnout, with poor patient and organizational outcomes (Jun et al., 2021). Burnout among RNs is associated with reduced patient safety, missed care, and job dissatisfaction among the nurses (White et al., 2019).

The impacts of RN shortages go beyond the delivery of clinical care to having significant economic outcomes. Missed care has been linked to a significant increase in the overall costs of care of care. For instance, missing critical care for a single day increased the costs of care by 14.1%, while missing care for five days inflated the costs by 78.4% (Anne Haque, 2021). On the other hand, the loss of nurses due to them leaving has been shown to cost hospitals an estimated $46,100 (Kusterbeck, 2022), in which the cost of recruitment a single range between $10,000 and $88,000 (De Vries et al., 2023). These health and economic impacts of RN shortages necessitate the implementation of targeted responses, including investing in RN retention programs, including better incentives, ensuring work flexibility through the use of technology, and collaborations with nurse training institutions to improve the supply of qualified nurses to meet demand and ensure equitable access.

Personal, Professional, and Organizational Experiences and Call to Action

Being a nurse over the years has exposed me to the reality of the healthcare system and how the increasing health demand amid an RN shortage crisis impacts Americans, especially here in Oceanside. The daily struggle to meet patient demands with limited nursing resources is draining and mostly leaves one feeling hopeless about the practice. Because of such experiences, I advocate for and push for sustainable solutions and changes in nurse workforce planning. In this case, I have proposed a multi-stakeholder and multi-faceted approach in which investments are made toward improving incentives for nurses to increase retention, support nursing education, and partner with training institutions to prepare nurses for easier transition during education and upon graduation.

I, therefore, call upon you to take action and push for legislation promoting investments in the nursing workforce, especially in retention programs, to ensure the issue is addressed on time.

Thank you for your attention and consideration of this important matter. I am readily available to expound on the proposed solutions at your convenience.

 

Sincerely,

Trixie Santos

References

Anne Haque, L. (2021). The effect of delays in acute medical treatment on total cost and potential ramifications due to the coronavirus pandemic. HPHR Journal, 26. https://doi.org/10.54111/0001/Z7

De Vries, N., Lavreysen, O., Boone, A., Bouman, J., Szemik, S., Baranski, K., Godderis, L., & De Winter, P. (2023). Retaining healthcare workers: A systematic review of strategies for sustaining power in the workplace. Healthcare (Switzerland), 11(13). https://doi.org/10.3390/HEALTHCARE11131887/S1

Jun, J., Ojemeni, M. M., Kalamani, R., Tong, J., & Crecelius, M. L. (2021). Relationship between nurse burnout, patient and organizational outcomes: Systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 119, 103933. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.IJNURSTU.2021.103933

Kusterbeck, S. (2022). The nursing shortage: Looking ahead to 2023 | Nurse.com. https://www.nurse.com/blog/the-nursing-shortage-looking-ahead-to-2023/

White, E. M., Aiken, L. H., & McHugh, M. D. (2019). Registered nurse burnout, job dissatisfaction, and missed care in nursing homes. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 67(10), 2065–2071. https://doi.org/10.1111/JGS.16051

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Lobbying for Change

Write a letter to an official in your state or local government. (Choose the individual in the level of government that will best address your issue). The purpose of this letter is to advocate for action with regards to your chosen health care environment issue.

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Introduction
Note: Each assessment in this course builds upon the work you have completed in previous assessments. Therefore, you must complete the assessments in the order in which they are presented.

As health care leaders, it is important to understand strategies for advocating and lobbying elected officials. This can lead to the development of policies or laws that can help drive improved equity and outcomes for all participants in the health care environment as well as a more sustainable financial future.

Background and Context
As a master’s-level health care practitioner, you may be expected to implement plans to ensure that initiatives designed to take advantage of economic opportunities for the organization are rolled out successfully and can be sustained over multiple years. Additionally, it is important to be able to envision how an initiative could be implemented in different contexts and for different purposes to ensure the investment remains a viable and positive asset to your organization or care setting.

As a master’s-level practitioner, you will often be challenged to influence the health care environment in a variety of ways. This influence can occur on a micro-level (implementing change on your unit, institution, community, or local organizations) or at a macro level (implementing change via state or federal regulations and policy). One way you can influence the health care environment is by lobbying an elected official at the local, state, or national level to adopt policies or legislation that would support positive economic and health outcomes for patients, practitioners, and organizations within the health care environment.

Instructions
For this assessment, you will develop a letter to an official in your state or local government (choose the individual in the level of government that will best address your issue). The purpose of this letter is to advocate for action with regards to your chosen health care environment issue. Remember, when writing the letter, you must use your personal address and telephone number unless you are exclusively representing a group or your organization.

Be sure to address each main point. Review the assessment instructions and scoring guide, including performance-level descriptions for each criterion, to ensure you understand the work you will be asked to complete and how it will be assessed. In addition, note the requirements for document format and length and for supporting evidence.

Overall, your assessment submission will be assessed on the following criteria:

Summarize the health care economic issue that you are addressing.
Keep this brief but try to include details about how the issue is currently impacting the elected officials’ constituents.
Explain the positive outcomes that will occur if the issue is addressed and the negative outcomes that will occur if the issue is not addressed.
Tailor this messaging to focus on the impacts in the communities and organizations that are relevant to the elected official you are writing to.
Summarize key information from scholarly sources to support the importance of addressing the issue; the issue’s overall impact on health care at the institutional, local, state, or national level; and proposed changes or actions to address the issue.
Cite at least five current, scholarly sources that support your argument and help provide the elected official (who may not have a detailed knowledge of the health care environment) with an understanding of the issues, changes, or actions that you are proposing to drive improved outcomes.
Identify the impact your issue has on health care institutions and health care providers at the local community, state, or national level.
Make sure to include information from both a health care and an economic perspective. An elected official may be more responsive to one perspective than another.
Incorporate social justice, structural racism, and inequity principles when picking resources and making recommendations for change in your assessment.
Explain how personal, professional, and organizational experiences have informed the resource planning and risk analysis for working toward addressing the economic issue.
Think about how your experiences (the experiences can be personal, professional, or from your team’s perspective or experience) affect how you have planned for the resources needed to implement your desired changes or actions. How did this impact your approach to conducting a risk analysis on the project?
Convey purpose, in an appropriate tone and style, incorporating supporting evidence and adhering to organizational, professional, and scholarly communication standards.
Remember to conclude your letter with a summary of your position on the issue and a compelling reason that the elected official should act in your favor and support your issue or initiative.
Additional Requirements
Audience: Make sure you are addressing your letter to an actual local or state official.
For most states, you can use the following resource:
Assessment 4: Lobbying for Change.
For local officials, search your city’s government website for officials and their positions.
Length of Submission: 1–2 double spaced pages. Your letter needs to be succinct and persuasive.
Number of References: Cite at least five sources of evidence to support your identification of the gap. This could be public health data, a peer-reviewed journal article, or another scholarly source.
APA formatting: Resources and citations are formatted according to current APA style.
Note: As you revise your writing, check out the resources listed on the Writing Center’s Writing Support page.

Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:

Competency 1: Analyze the effects of financial and economic factors (such as cost-benefit, supply and demand, return on investment, and risks) in a health care system on patient care, services offered, and organizational structures and operation.
Summarize the health care economic issue that you are addressing.
Competency 2: Develop ethical and culturally equitable solutions to economic problems within a health care organization in an effort to improve the quality of care and services offered.
Explain the positive outcomes that will occur if the issue is addressed and negative outcomes that will occur if the issue is not addressed.
Competency 3: Justify the qualitative and quantitative information used to guide economic decision making to stakeholders and colleagues.
Summarize key information from scholarly sources to support the importance of addressing the issue; the issue’s overall impact on health care at the institutional, local, state, or national level; and proposed changes or actions to address the issue.
Competency 4: Develop ethical and culturally equitable economic strategies to address dynamic environmental forces and ensure the future security of an organization’s resources and its ability to provide quality care.
Explain how personal, professional, and organizational experiences have informed the resource planning and risk analysis for working toward addressing the economic issue.
Competency 5: Produce clear, coherent, and professional written work, in accordance with Capella writing standards.
Convey purpose, in an appropriate tone and style, incorporating supporting evidence and adhering to organizational, professional, and scholarly writing standards.