The amount of money that gets wasted in healthcare facilities can be shocking, especially to healthcare personnel that are unaware. While it may be your primary duty to care for your residents, medicine and finance expertise are collectively valuable.
Nursing staff at long-term care facilities should all be privy to costs and how important managing finances are. There are a few things to consider when building your understanding of the importance of healthcare finance.
PPE will continue to be a high expense
Nursing homes have been hotspots for COVID spread, and PPE will be a necessary precaution for quite some time.
PPE is a highly in-demand necessity that can explain the high costs of an adequate supply, but these high costs will remain as long as demand remains high. Since costs are high along with demand, compromising any supply could lead to misuse of funds.
Proper funding must be allocated to PPE just in case further outbreaks of COVID occur. According to research, most nursing homes may have about one week’s supply at a time. And if an outbreak occurs, that week supply can be used in a few days while following advanced protocol.
Patient flow costs
Despite working in long-term care, it is not uncommon for nurses and other staff to not be sure of the operating expenses behind every patient. Discharging patients and readmitting them alone can have unexpected costs. It is best for staff to be informed on the cost range so they can refrain from habits or actions that could cost their facility.
Actions could include putting more than an adequate amount of supplies in their rooms, running incorrect testing, multiple testing due to staff error, and more. Keeping clinical care standardized by following all standard procedures for exams, developing diagnoses, and much more can keep costs consistent.
Wasted spending could affect compensation for needed staff
Many providers cannot sustain a full staff right now. While staffing issues could be from workers not being vaccinated to caring for children or sick loved ones at home, compensation can also be an underlying factor.
As a result, many facilities have had to provide incentives such as sign-on bonuses and higher salaries to help resolve the staffing issue. However, the funds need to be available in order to make those better job offers. Therefore, mismanagement of resources that leads to wasting money that could be directed toward staffing should be monitored and addressed as such.
Effective ways to educate nursing staff about healthcare finance
There is plenty of sensitive data that flows through a nursing home. However, some documents should be viewed by all nursing staff in order to understand their facility’s finances better. Chargemaster documents should be reviewed by nursing staff to gain clarity on costs for every resource and supplies they use daily. Reviewing the documents and seeing high costs could influence better habits for effective use.
Finance resource management training or healthcare-industry-specific resource management courses should be mandatory for all nursing staff. They can provide the finance knowledge that many nurses may lack in the workforce and greatly improve facilities’ financial management and performance.
Nursing homes also should invest in cost management systems to manage healthcare finances.
The overall goal is for all staff to be mindful of finances in their facilities, save money through proper management of supplies and resources, and not to cut corners in any way.
Lyle Solomon has considerable litigation experience as well as substantial hands-on knowledge and expertise in legal analysis and writing. Since 2003, he has been a member of the State Bar of California. In 1998, he graduated from the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California, and now serves as a principal attorney for the Oak View Law Group in California.
The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.
