IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v44y1997i2p147-155.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nurse staffing patterns and hospital efficiency in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Bloom, Joan R.
  • Alexander, Jeffrey A.
  • Nuchols, Beverly A.

Abstract

The objective of this exploratory study was to assess the effects of four nurse staffing patterns on the efficiency of patient care delivery in the hospital: registered nurses (RNs) from temporary agencies; part-time career RNs; RN rich skill mix; and organizationally experienced RNs. Using Transaction Cost Analysis, four regression models were specified to consider the effect of these staffing plans on personnel and benefit costs and on non-personnel operating costs. A number of additional variables were also included in the models to control for the effect of other organization and environmental determinants of hospital costs. Use of career part-time RNs and experienced staff reduced both personnel and benefit costs, as well as total non-personnel operating costs, while the use of temporary agencies for RNs increased non-personnel operating costs. An RN rich skill mix was not related to either measure of hospital costs. These findings provide partial support of the theory. Implications of our findings for future research on hospital management are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Bloom, Joan R. & Alexander, Jeffrey A. & Nuchols, Beverly A., 1997. "Nurse staffing patterns and hospital efficiency in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 147-155, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:44:y:1997:i:2:p:147-155
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(96)00063-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sebastiano, Antonio & Belvedere, Valeria & Grando, Alberto & Giangreco, Antonio, 2017. "The effect of capacity management strategies on employees' well-being: A quantitative investigation into the long-term healthcare industry," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 563-573.
    2. Sunil K. Dixit & Murali Sambasivan, 2020. "An Integrated Multitheoretical Perspective of Public Healthcare Services Delivery Organizations," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 319-335, June.
    3. Carina Fagefors & Björn Lantz & Peter Rosén, 2020. "Creating Short-Term Volume Flexibility in Healthcare Capacity Management," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(22), pages 1-18, November.
    4. Carina Fagefors & Björn Lantz, 2021. "Application of Portfolio Theory to Healthcare Capacity Management," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(2), pages 1-9, January.
    5. Gold, Heather T. & McDermott, Cara & Hoomans, Ties & Wagner, Todd H., 2022. "Cost data in implementation science: categories and approaches to costing," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113704, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Benson, Alan, 2013. "Firm-sponsored general education and mobility frictions: Evidence from hospital sponsorship of nursing schools and faculty," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 149-159.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:44:y:1997:i:2:p:147-155. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.