How does YOUR hospital waste its money?

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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?

Specializes in trauma, ortho, burns, plastic surgery.

From money waste balance point of view is not a good decision to hire a travel nurse.

At managerial level you need to have another skills than a regular nurse THE FORECASTING SKILLS, unfortunately less used, lol

You could use a travel nurse in emergency sitautions, when UNEXPECTED events are on place. But if your years forecastings SHOWED you that in some time you are understaffing or overstaffing you need to use you good managerial own judgemnet, to be predictible, be prepared and take actions before to be happen lol and to protect the money of company and the sanity of employee and to staple "good managerial team".

Acting crazy and scared (and hiring traveling nurses, because is to late to do somenthing else) is a poor judgement and company money spending FOR NOTHING!

Be preventive... is what the school teach us... asses and reasses the situation and take action before to be happen and protect our money because they are for all of us...damn it gurls! :lol2::lol2::lol2:

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Specializes in PICU/NICU.

We(as nurses on my unit) waste money by throwing out unused supplies from pts rooms when they transfer out. Perfectly good IV tubing, syringes, alcohol pads, diapers, the list goes on. ANYTHING left in a pts room is considered "dirty" EVEN IF IT IS IN THE PACKAGE!! Drives me nuts! It is just tossed in the trash- these are non chargable items mostly so we are eating the cost. It makes my blood boil every time I walk into the room and there are like 4 wash basins 3 graduadted cylinders and a pile of syringes and caps in the room beacuse I know they will all be thrown out----- so wasteful!!

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
angie with all my respect for you, i could tell you, that if an experineced nurse will stay one the same position as a new graduate she always will be paid almost the same.

if you are experinced nurse means that you are able to work in nursing fields that require experienced nursing skills and you will be paid according with that.

i saw in my passed work nurses with 10-15 years experinece, always complaining about their "the same wages like new grads"...but... doing the same work like new grads much more trying each time to have the low accuity patients as possible.

so if you want a differential wage based on experinece... do ... somenthing more than a new grad do or move in high responsability position and advance you nursing carrier.

is sad to see a nurse with 10-15 years experinece running on halls moaning all the times trying to figure out the low accuity patients and low responsabilities but wishing a high salary...just because...and opening the new grads paycheck to compare with them... is just sickness dear angy with all my respect for my oldies... management need to figure out this situation until... new grads will not running out because are overloaded and work in a hostile envirnment and experianced nurses run also because they belive that deserve more dollars and in the same time to work less.

money payed and work loading could be well balanced if management really care about it. with this balance and regulations about payment scale and work accuity loading, start the happines or unhappines of employees.

but who care..as soon as few of us ;) are happy, loooool ...

with all due respect, zuzi, you just don't get it.

an experienced nurse is worth more money than a new grad, even if the experienced nurse chooses to spend her/his entire career at the bedside. an experienced nurse can walk into a patient room and within a minute or two, have gathered enough information to make a good prediction about how that patient's shift is going to go: is he sitting up and chatting with visitors, or is he slumped over and somewhat short of breath? is the skin color nice and pink or slightly grey tinged? and so forth. an experienced nurse can take all of that in at once, then sit down and chart it later. the new grad is still moving down her checklist, whether it be mental or written, one step at a time.

experienced nurses are needed to balance out the skill set, because new grads don't recognize right away when their patients are getting into trouble or know what to do about it when they do get into trouble. so the experienced nurse is needed to be back up for the new grad, to help with troubleshooting equipment, to help with unfamiliar skills, to pitch in when the new grad is swamped. experienced nurses are also needed to precept, do charge, run codes . . . or do you think new grads just off orientation should be able to do that?

one reason an experienced nurse might be looking for the easier assignment is because they spend so much of their time helping the new grads trouble shoot, teaching skills, interpret assessments, decide on a treatment, etc. etc. etc. i know that the nights i'm in a 6 bed room with only new grads around me, i spend as much time giving them help and advice as i do with my own patients. and that is worth more money.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
from money waste balance point of view is not a good decision to hire a travel nurse.

at managerial level you need to have another skills than a regular nurse the forecasting skills, unfortunately less used, lol

you could use a travel nurse in emergency sitautions, when unexpected events are on place. but if your years forecastings showed you that in some time you are understaffing or overstaffing you need to use you good managerial own judgemnet, to be predictible, be prepared and take actions before to be happen lol and to protect the money of company and the sanity of employee and to staple "good managerial team".

acting crazy and scared (and hiring traveling nurses, because is to late to do somenthing else) is a poor judgement and company money spending for nothing!

be preventive... is what the school teach us... asses and reasses the situation and take action before to be happen and protect our money because they are for all of us...damn it gurls! :lol2::lol2::lol2:

again, zuzi, with all respect to your school -- you just don't get it. hiring a travel nurse is not "acting crazy and scared." it is often a sound business decision. if your skill mix leans toward new grads, you may need travel nurses to add some experience into into the mx. if you have a bunch of orientees coming off orientation 3 months down the line, a travel nurse may be a good short-term solution to fill the gap. often times people who know they plan to leave three or four months down the line and just don't give notice until two weeks before their last day. it's hard for management to plan for vacancies when people don't share their plans. hiring short term employees is a sound managerial strategy.

on the other hand, your post is so hard to understand that maybe you're not saying that hiring a travel nurse means "acting crazy and scared."

ruby vee (my opinion is based on 30+ years of nursing experience and an mba.)

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Specializes in trauma, ortho, burns, plastic surgery.

RV I am so sorry if my post ofend you in some how... and yes I am agree with you that you need some experinced nurses on the floor with new grads. BUT.... could be part-times, on call, regular RNs instead of travelling RNs.

I could uderstand very well your frustation related my poor english and lack of american hospitals managerial experinece my opinion was just a good sense one based on concret facts seen .

My dear RV are so many ways to deal with money waste...if someone really care, and in the same if they try to help new grads to have jobs. WHO are scarred of new grads?

Instead to hire a travel nurse you could go FORECASTING and go into nursing schools and choose new nurses and train and sponsor them throught the school. With a nurse started to be trained since the school.time..... in 3 years you will have not an experienced one.......but one who know how to do thinks in a PERFECT way......and you will not need a lot of traveling ones. Couple of experienced regular ones are more than helpfull and NEVER will let the sensation of an OLD CLIQUE. We need new nurses, new graduates, happy, confidents with good mentors, eagerd to be good nurses and they need us to integrate in crew, even if you are agree or not with me!

Is not a solution to spend money on traveling.. A LOT OF MONEY... when you have local ones, focus on them!

I am so sorry again that my english is not fitted well in the context and also I am so sorry if my logicality disturb some how old paths and old ways to waste money and to keep thinks in the same patterns....., but with all my respect.... before to be stuck in some old patterns we need to think a little! Thanks so much even for effort to read my posting, Zuzi just a foreign RN.

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I think JCAHO and Press Gainey are probably the biggest waste of money for hospitals.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

There are so many ways my hospital wastes money... like staffing most shifts up to ~50% with OT. Like recruiting and hiring new staff by the busload then pushing them through a poorly designed orientation so they're quickly overwhelmed and they leave. Like making promises and then reneging on them so that people get pee'd off and leave. Like having three managers all working on the same days, and no managers on site at night. Like creating layer upon layer of middle administration with their attendant support staff needs. Duplication of services... and so on.

Then there are patient care decisions that make one go,"HUH? WHAT?" Implanting VADs into patients who will never recover their cardiac function and will also never survive to transplant even if they qualify, meaning they have to stay in the ICU for months until they finally can't be resuscitated any more. Running CRRT continuously for more than a year on a patient who will never qualify for a kidney transplant and then wondering why your pump is breaking down. Allowing a patient to remain in the ICU long after they're ready to go to the floor because their care is "too complex for the floor nurses"... no, it's not, but if they go to the floor YOU won't have any further input into the situation and you can't let go!

Then there's purchasing major equipment without a plan... and none of the parts actually interconnects to make a whole. Our hospital has four different types of syringe pumps, and NONE of them are compatible with our new Smart Pumps... which have a syringe pump capability. The waste of supplies someone mentioned, well how's this... our PICU routinely changes out the pressure bag setup on our invasive pressure lines for kids

I won't even go into the $39 million cardiac sciences centre that has already been totally renovated twice and still hasn't opened for business 18 months after it was supposed to be ready to go. It will have the aforementioned specialty beds with the integrated flatscreen TVs with WiFi internet access. It will also have the aforementioned healing garden. When it opens in 2047, or whenever they finally get it to completion, it'll aready be obsolete.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

then there are patient care decisions that make one go,"huh? what?" implanting vads into patients who will never recover their cardiac function and will also never survive to transplant even if they qualify, meaning they have to stay in the icu for months until they finally can't be resuscitated any more. running crrt continuously for more than a year on a patient who will never qualify for a kidney transplant and then wondering why your pump is breaking down. allowing a patient to remain in the icu long after they're ready to go to the floor because their care is "too complex for the floor nurses"... no, it's not, but if they go to the floor you won't have any further input into the situation and you can't let go!

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this one makes me cringe, and i've seen it, too. implanting vads into illegal aliens. heart transplants for illegal aliens. (i'm not saying that illegal aliens aren't people, too, or that they don't deserve basic health care. but heart transplants and vads are far beyond basic health care, and to do them at the taxpayer expense when so many taxpayers cannot afford this level of healthcare for themselves just strikes me as wrong.) heart surgery on an 83 year old from which he (surprise!) isn't recovering --- so let's do three more surgeries on him rather than face the inevitable and just let him go.

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Specializes in trauma, ortho, burns, plastic surgery.

Aliens are not the point to focus now! I am sure that for many of people here, grand parents or grand grand parents was aliens, legal or illegal ones, at one point in them life! Damn it, gurls, what is here with so "against aliens reaction"? You are NURSES not immigration border officers and you need to take care of all, dosen't matter and if a alien need a transplant to be saved... ETHICAL is to have it!

OMG..let me in my hole to don't heard again these discriminatory nurses judgements!

The point now are leaders and leadership and units managerial teams and them decisions.... and fallowing the leaders, when the roof is on the fire...loooool.

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Home Health.

They leave the huge outside lights on all day/night. They host meetings for the managers and each is CATERED. They cut our raises because they are "broke" but they are in the middle of remodelling the registration area and rebuilding the ER. They have purchased about half of our town...houses and apartments. No one understands why they keep buying houses/apartments, etc. They have even cut our supplies. I really dont know how they expect to keep nurses and how they expect us to do our job with no supplies!

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Specializes in Telemetry & Obs.
Aliens are not the point to focus now! I am sure that for many of people here, grand parents or grand grand parents was aliens, legal or illegal ones, at one point in them life! Damn it, gurls, what is here with so "against aliens reaction"? You are NURSES not immigration border officers and you need to take care of all, dosen't matter and if a alien need a transplant to be saved... ETHICAL is to have it!

OMG..let me in my hole to don't heard again these discriminatory nurses judgements!

The point now are leaders and leadership and units managerial teams and them decisions.... and fallowing the leaders, when the roof is on the fire...loooool.

Sorry, zuzi, but when it's my money paying for the heart transplants, etc that are above and beyond BASIC medical care for persons here ILLEGALLY, I do have the right to be upset.

Thankfully I go back to work in March, but right now I'm busting butt paying almost $1200 a month for COBRA just so I have medical insurance. I have to sacrifice a lot to pay that premium, but I can't afford not to. Frankly it peeves me to no end that somebody can slip across the border and get the same medical care I receive (and I pay dearly for) for FREE.

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Specializes in Cardiac.
Damn it, gurls, what is here with so "against aliens reaction"? You are NURSES not immigration border officers and you need to take care of all, dosen't matter and if a alien need a transplant to be saved... ETHICAL is to have it!

OMG..let me in my hole to don't heard again these discriminatory nurses judgements!

I really don't want to start an 'illegal alien thread here' but zuzi the illegal alien situation is a PROBLEM. They have caused many hospitals to close down and quite honestly WILL be the reason my hosptial closes down too. We BLEED so much money to them that it's not even funny. We dont' get reimbursed for that money and we can't think that giving money away for free is good economic policy...

And our own citizens can't receive half the healthcare.

You know, we DO treat them ethically. What I say on a discussion board does not correlate with how I treat my pts.

We are talking about waste here zuzi, and I'm sorry, but we waste a lot of money on illegals. They have their own country who should be ethically treating them.

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