Although most hospitals track nursing investments as expenditures but not return on investment, chief nursing leaders at 45 U.S. hospitals said these initiatives support positive hospital operating margins.
An American Nurses Enterprise-commissioned survey asked chief nurse executives and chief nursing officers about their workforces, investment expenditures and hospital operating margin. Most hospitals recognized in the survey have more than 400 beds, and the 45 leaders collectively oversee 80,000 nurses.
The survey found that adjusting minimum wages for competitive compensation, as well as investments in safety, well-being, recruitment and retention, had a strong positive association with a hospital’s operating margin.
“Nurses represent the largest single component of a hospital’s personnel budget, yet the economic value of nursing has too often been viewed primarily through the lens of labor cost rather than as an investment in organizational assets,” the American Nurses Enterprise said in a March 26 news release.
The organization commissioned Olga Yakusheva, PhD, a nursing professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and Marianne Weiss, DNS, RN, professor emerita at Marquette University in Milwaukee, to conduct the study, according to the release.
The American Nurses Enterprise said the full study will be published in a peer-reviewed publication in the coming months.
“The findings provide hospital executives with foundational guidance for investment in the nursing workforce, and underscore the imperative for better availability and access to financial performance data for ROI calculation, strategic planning and benchmarking,” Dr. Yakusheva and Dr. Weiss wrote.
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