When hospitals have above-average nurse staffing levels and better working environments for nurses, surgical patients there tend to have lower mortality rates with similar costs, according to a study in JAMA Surgery.
Researchers compared two groups of hospitals in the study. One group had above-average nurse staffing ratios and highly rated nurse working environment, as recognized by national organizations. The control group did not have those features, but did have a similar patient pool to hospitals in the first group. The researchers compared surgical patient outcomes and costs between the two groups.
The 30-day mortality rate for hospitals in the first group was 4.8 percent compared to 5.8 percent for hospitals in the control group. The cost per patient in both groups was similar but slightly lower in the focal group.
"These results do not suggest that improving any specific hospital's nursing environment will necessarily improve its value, but they do show that patients undergoing general surgery at hospitals with better nursing environments generally receive care of higher value," according to the study.