How does YOUR hospital waste its money?

Published

Like most hospitals, we are overwhelmed with busy work courtesy of the state and JCAHO. Not to mention the resident families, some of whom are more work than their patient. But we can't get enough staff to cover all this so that the nurses can nurse. Costs too much. So it drives me WILD when I think about how much money they throw away every day. To name a few: carefully prepared supplemental nutrition shakes that get thrown out because no-one has time to feed them to the patients, silly little contest prizes to make their employees feel "loved", employee surveys (that nobody will answer honestly because too much identifying data is asked for) to prove everyone is deliriously happy, and of course the ridiculous advertising wars with the other hospital in town. How does your hospital waste its health care dollars?

Illegal Aliens cost hospitals so much money these days.

If it's not life and death, and you can't prove you are a legal citizen then you need to find some money before being treated

Specializes in Cath Lab, OR, CPHN/SN, ER.
We water our sidewalks. :)

Illegal Aliens cost hospitals so much money these days.

If it's not life and death, and you can't prove you are a legal citizen then you need to find some money before being treated

EMTALA who?

Specializes in Psychiatric.

Consultants. :icon_roll Sure, some are ok, but for every little thing they go out and hire someone to find out what the problem is.

You'd think that if someone could get an upper management kind of job, he/she ought to be a good problem-solver rather than the type to just hire someone else to figure it out. If only you could sneak a Demotivator poster into everyone's office:

consulting.jpg

The small community hospital that I work in just spent a ton of money on a new call light system. They are now timing us to see how long it takes for the message to be received in the nurses station till we get in the room to assist the patient. We have to physically go into the patient's room and turn off the call light on a lightpad behind the patients bed so the timer stops. They're going to let us know next week how we're doing. :angryfire

I just wonder how many more "studies" they're going to "pilot" before they realize that we need more nurses and CNA's.

Specializes in Babies, peds, pain management.

My manager just spent the week at a hospital across the state, meaning her room and meals provided, to observe how they were surveyed by JACHO. Maybe I'm the crazy one, but wouldn't it be better for her to stay and manager her own unit? Of course, she has a team of underlings to do this.

I understand the need for inspections and accreditation, but this place is absolutely manic waiting for THE visit.

Just my one cent! (the economy is bad!)

Illegal Aliens cost hospitals so much money these days.

If it's not life and death, and you can't prove you are a legal citizen then you need to find some money before being treated

Everyone has the right to health care whether they are documented or not. No such thing as an illegal alien, they are undocumented immigrants. If someone is suffering, refusing to provide them healthcare just because they don't make enough money is immoral and unethical.

Specializes in Neuro trauma ICU, Flight Nurse.

Tee hee! PAPER PAPER PAPER and the nineteen unnecessary levels of management is where our hospital wastes it's money! Every morning that I am greeted by four or five different levels of management, I have to shake my head!!! HA! Hey, maybe if I'm there long enough, I'll be added to the twentieth layer! HA! :chuckle

I probably spend at least an hour daily looking for supplies. We constantly have broken/not enough vitals machines, and are out of basic supplies. One day I literally had to walk down to the bowels of the hospital to get an XL gown bc the dispatch supply people couldn't handle it. It took me at least fifteen minutes. Patient care? Productivity? Nah..just have the nurses stock!

Specializes in Telemetry & Obs.

Ummm...they built a beautiful meditation room with stained glass and pews right before moving everybody to the new tower. Now there's nobody down there to enjoy the new room!

Evidently they're BIG on advertising because I typically see at least one TV ad a day about my hospital system.

On the bright side: they encourage the staff to be conscientious about chargeables. We get a percentage of the profits each year at Christmas time and it can be substantial.

Specializes in LTC, Med-Surg, IMCU/Tele, HH/CM.

Our hospital uses RNs as 1:1's when they could be using a PCP.

Specializes in Pediatric/Adolescent, Med-Surg.

My hospital wastes a ton of money. Radio, television, billbord, and magazine ads for a start. They just built a brand new hospital, complete with a night time light show on the roof. Talk about a waste of money.

Specializes in SRNA.

The one thing that strikes me as a huge waste of money is that each and every night the patient's lab results are printed for their entire hospital stay....not just the previous 24hr's worth of labs, but the entire history of labwork is reprinted and replaced in the chart each day. That's on top of lab results being printed as the lab posts the result (these copies aren't placed in the chart, just given to the nurses). The best part is that we have computerized charting and you can look up results in the EMR.

+ Join the Discussion