NHS FPX 6008 Assessment 16008 Identifying a Local Health Care Economic Issue

Identifying a Local Health Care Economic Issue

Student name

Capella University

NHS FPX6008

Prof Name

Submission date

Introduction

In NHS FPX 6008 Assessment 1 we examines the high cost of implementing medical technologies as a local healthcare economic issue. Nursing shortage and the lack of sufficient staffing in hospitals are a dilemma that touches on the sphere of health care and the economy and affects access to health care services. The reasons for this issue are the lack of RNs in different hospitals across the country due to the growing number of patients, burnout, aging, and turnover. The current problem was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic since mental pressures placed upon health care professionals were also increasing (Pelham, 2024). Poor staffing of the hospital means that they will not be able to tackle the increasing number of patients.

Healthcare Economic Issue

The acute case of nurse shortage turns into an important economic problem in connection with hospitals in relation to the need to achieve a balance between the number of staff members and the needs of the organization, which increases regularly. Furthermore, many organizations find it challenging to control the ratio of nurses and patients as well as costs. According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (2023), nearly 10,000 registered nurses vacated their job roles because of the heavy stress, exhaustion, and untimely retirements as a result of the coronavirus disease.

According to another statistic, the shortage of healthcare workers is expected to be addressed by increasing the number of newly registered nurses to 1.2 million in 2030 (University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, 2024). The shortage of workers is linked to a rise in the cost of hiring nurses and temporary nurses, patient misery, and re-hospitalizations. It is necessary to point out that the issue of understaffing is associated with prolonged hospital stay, medical mistakes, infections, and even death (Dall’Ora et al., 2022). Additionally, the issues of low quality of their services and client contentment may affect understaffed healthcare facilities.

The Rationale for Selecting the Healthcare Issue

The issue has been chosen because it is probable that most problems will arise as a result of the nursing staff shortage. In the first place, nursing personnel are one of the necessary factors that will assist in ensuring that patients are under constant monitoring with regard to their feelings, medication, and education about the necessity to receive proper treatment.

The issue of staffing shortage can lead to the staff working overtime amongst the existing staff. Such a scenario is predicted to introduce an unhealthy atmosphere in the workplace that could keep the employees on edge and exasperated with the job, leading to resignation (Pi et al., 2025). The importance of the topic can be explained with references to the fact that quality care provision to patients requires appropriate staffing. From an ethical viewpoint, inadequate staffing implies poor patient care.

Significant Impacts of Healthcare Economic Issues

Nursing shortage can have some of the primary consequences related to the health professional impact, organizational impact, client impact, and the impact on public health. Firstly, the already existing nursing shortage in hospitals will undoubtedly put the strain on health professionals who might experience stress, fatigue, and burnout, which will compel them to treat an even greater number of patients than anticipated (Alansari et al., 2025). The dissatisfaction will be distributed among workers; i.e., many nurses will terminate their contracts, and the rest will have to bear the burden.

Having joined an organization with such a problem, the health professionals will experience poor morale and lack of cooperation as a result of understaffing and stress at work. In terms of organizational effects, recruitment cost, training cost, overtime payment, and the use of temporary nurses will be higher. Other organizational influences could be poor client satisfaction, medical errors, and losses due to the influence of the same. Dall’Ora et al. (2022) claim that hospitals that have sufficient nurses had fewer deaths and high-quality services compared to hospitals with inadequate nurses. This is the way health disparities can arise as a result of nursing shortages.

Gap to Address the Healthcare Economic Issue

Failure to apply effective workforce management practices that would assist in keeping nurses at the hospital is one of the major reasons that lead to a shortage of nurses in the workplace. Several of the hospitals attempt to tackle the problem of shortage with short-term solutions, such as staffing companies and applying overtime to cope with the lack of nurses in the hospital. Inefficiencies in workforce management have contributed to increasing the number of nurses who experience work exhaustion (Alansari et al., 2025).

The presence of poor work conditions and workload has caused the nurses to be dissatisfied with their job, and this has contributed to the turnover of nurses. Besides that, the American Nurses Association (2024) asserts that approximately 62% of nurses report having encountered burnout issues that lead to nurse shortages in the USA. Additionally, there are a number of hospitals that cannot invest in nurse retention programs in rural locations and have financial constraints to do so for other reasons.

Conclusion

Poor nurse-to-patient ratios and nursing shortages in American hospitals are a critical economic issue affecting the health care industry not only for the patient, but also for the health care practitioner, organization, and society. The rising shortage of staff results in increased expenses of running hospitals and can put the lives of patients in jeopardy due to poor-quality health care that they receive. The consequences of the issue on the health of nurses and the presence of institutions are numerous.

For 2nd (Next) Assessment of class NHS-6008: NHS FPX 6008 Assessment 2