How Can Employment-Based Benefits Help the Nursing Shortage?: Executive Summary

Summarizes a study of the benefits available to registered nurses; trends in health insurance and retirement plan enrollment; and the role benefits play in recruitment and retention. Includes recommendations for healthcare leaders and employers

Nursing Home Implementation of Health Information Technology: Review of the Literature Finds Inadequate Investment in Preparation, Infrastructure, and Training.

Health information technology (HIT) is increasingly adopted by nursing homes to improve safety, quality of care, and staff productivity. We examined processes of HIT implementation in nursing homes, impact on the nursing home workforce, and related evidence on quality of care. We conducted a literature review that yielded 46 research articles on nursing homes' implementation of HIT. To provide additional contemporary context to our findings from the literature review, we also conducted semistructured interviews and small focus groups of nursing home staff (n = 15) in the United States. We found that nursing homes often do not employ a systematic process for HIT implementation, lack necessary technology support and infrastructure such as wireless connectivity, and underinvest in staff training, both for current and new hires. We found mixed evidence on whether HIT affects staff productivity and no evidence that HIT increases staff turnover. We found modest evidence that HIT may foster teamwork and communication. We found no evidence that the impact of HIT on staff or workflows improves quality of care or resident health outcomes. Without initial investment in implementation and training of their workforce, nursing homes are unlikely to realize potential HIT-related gains in productivity and quality of care. Policy makers should consider creating greater incentives for preparation, infrastructure, and training, with greater engagement of nursing home staff in design and implementation

Is There Monopsony in the Labor Market? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

A variety of recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market. However, there is little direct empirical support for these models, even in labor markets that are textbook examples of monopsony. We use an exogenous change in wages at Veterans Affairs hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market. In contrast to much of the prior literature, we estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic, with short-run elasticity around 0.1. We also find that non-VA hospitals responded to the VA wage change by changing their own wages.

Affordable Care Act of 2010: Creating Job Opportunities for Racially and Ethnically Diverse Populations

The health care industry has been an engine of job growth, and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) is expected to stimulate further growth. Over the next decade, the health care sector could add 4.6 million jobs, representing a 31% increase from current employment. New job opportunities from entry-level positions to highly trained professions are expected to emerge in the industry.In this report, we present an inventory of health care jobs occupied by people of color, and the changes in occupation mix over time. We then estimate job growth in the health care industry and present potential job opportunities for people of color.

Nursing in a Transformed Health Care System: New Roles, New Rules

Although the supply of nurses is likely to meet overall demand, the nature of a nurse’s job is changing dramatically. In redesigned health care systems, nurses are assuming expanded roles for a broad range of patients in ambulatory settings and communitybased care. These roles involve new responsibilities for population health, care coordination and interprofessional collaboration. Nursing education needs to impart new skills and regulatory frameworks need to be updated to optimize the contributions of nurses in transformed care delivery models

Changing home care aides: Differences between family and non-family care in California Medicaid home and community-based services.

In California Medicaid home-and-community-based services (HCBS), recipients' family members receive payment as home care aides (HCAs). We analyzed data on first-time HCBS recipients to examine factors associated with the likelihood of switching HCAs within the first year of services. Those with family HCAs were less than half as likely to change than those with non-family HCAs and racial/ethnic minorities with non-family HCAs had the highest switching rates. Lower wages and local unemployment were associated with switching of non-family HCAs but not family HCAs. Policymakers can foster continuity of home care by paying family members for home care and raising worker wages

Is There Monopsony in the Labor Market? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Recent theoretical and empirical advances have renewed interest in monopsonistic models of the labor market. However, there is little direct empirical support for these models. We use an exogenous change in wages at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals as a natural experiment to investigate the extent of monopsony in the nurse labor market. We estimate that labor supply to individual hospitals is quite inelastic, with short-run elasticity around 0.1. We also find that non-VA hospitals responded to the VA wage change by changing their own wages

Managed Care and Medical Technology Growth

Many questions about technology growth and development in health care call for a broad-based characterization of technology availability. In this paper, we explore the possibility of producing aggregated estimates of technology availability by constructing an index of technology availability in hospitals. Our index is based on the number of services provided by a hospital, weighted by how rare those services are. We use the index to examine the relationship between managed care and technology availability in hospitals. We find that managed care may have slowed technology growth in the mid 1980s, but in the early 1990s we find little evidence that technology growth in areas with high-HMO market share is any slower than growth in lower market share areas. To the extent that our index captures variation in the costs of new technologies, this finding leaves open the question of whether managed care can help control long term cost growth by slowing technology adoption. We also discuss the general strengths and weaknesses of indices of the type we develop. One concern arises from the considerable variation across individual technologies. We profile several individual technologies and note that conclusions drawn from the aggregated index may not apply to each of the constituent technologies. Nonetheless, this exercise shows that it is feasible to develop and analyze hospital technology indices if aggregated information about technologies is appropriate to the research question.