Hospitals Hire Nurse Practitioners- But at What Cost?
I remember the time when hospitals were owned by communities or religious organizations with the sole purpose of providing health care to community members in need. But now hospitals have evolved into multi-system corporate conglomerates where their main focus is to make a profit. A recent article in Beckers Clinical Leadership titled “NP Staffing Models: A Double Edged Sword For Hospitals” had the sole purpose of showing that NPs have greater independence due in part to the physician shortage and need for cost effective staffing.
It is unfortunate that many hospitals are bringing on board NPs as a cost effective strategy. What happened to providing excellent patient care, improving patient outcomes, decreasing readmissions and decreasing the severity of chronic illness?
According to 2022 data from Kaufman Hall, the financial impetus/appeal of hiring NPs is a primary care NPs annual salary is approximately $156,000 per year whereas a primary care physician is over double that at $344,000.
Regarding reimbursement, NPs generate $424,979 vs. $462,000 for physicians. Therefore, there is a much larger profit margin for the health care organizations who hire NPs.
According to the managing director at Kaufman Hall, he predicts advanced practice providers will outnumber physicians within the next decade.
While I think NPs are having a tremendous effect on improving health care and that facilities are hiring more NPs, I do not agree with the motive of putting profits ahead of care of patients.
According to HCA, they staff about 37 NPs for every 100 physicians which is slightly above the industry average.
However, the article does raise concern about the high pressure NPs face to manage critical patients beyond their level of training. There is criticism over the original article in Bloomberg that hospitals want to replace physicians with NPs, not supplement physicians with NPs because HCA claims that their physicians supervise the NPs.
I would love to see this health care system return to what it was truly designed to do which is to care for patients rather than being so profit driven.
