Financial Aspects of Healthcare
Introduction
Over the years, hospitals that have had financial issues have resorted to reducing their nurse staff as a way to increase the profitability in the hospitals as well as reducing the operational costs. This, in turn, does not relate well to patient delivery. It would be extremely hard for ten nurses to work in a hospital full of hundreds of beds. Some patients might go unattended. This is why the healthcare department needs to involve nursing staff in any financial decisions they want to make. This will give them an appropriate time to discuss the various effects of this decision. One of these financial decisions the hospital can make is cutting out labor forces to reduce the operational costs (Butts, Rich, 2019).
Nurses are required to meet the various labor-hours assigned to them as well as deliver the important daily goals to the patients. To ensure such a goal is met, the hospital should work to ensure that the number of patients matches the number of nurses around. For example, having one nurse take care of four patients is reasonable. For a nursing team to meet this goal, they should be able to have different work ethics, for example, strong and excellent communication skills as well as collaboration with other teams and doctors.
The management of the hospital should also be transparent in the way they staff their nurses. For example, make them understand why that particular goal has been set and why they need to reach it. Give and discuss ideas with them on how they can meet this goal. It wouldn’t be fair to tell them that it’s about a labor budget. Give the nurses a chance as well to look into the plan as well as give their ideas and opinions about this.
In summary, it would be of great help to let them air their views on the various things they feel should be implemented. With the above discussed ethical ways to involve the nursing staff in financial planning, the health sector would be moving on great.
References
Butts, J. B., & Rich, K. L. (2019). Nursing ethics. Jones & Bartlett Learning.