Instituting advanced practice registered nurses full-time at 16 Missouri nursing homes helped reduce resident hospitalizations and allowed the state to save more than $31 million over the course of six years. That’s according to the results of a study evaluating the effectiveness of the Missouri Quality Improvement Initiative, a $35 million program funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that was designed to improve quality of care in skilled nursing facilities.
Researchers at the University of Missouri’s Sinclair School of Nursing analyzed data from 16 Missouri nursing homes that had 121 to 321 beds and were located in urban and rural areas. In particular, they examined total hospital transfers and the average transfer rate per 1,000 resident days before and for several years following the homes’ institution of full-time APRNs and an operations support team. They found that 11 of the nursing homes achieved sustained improvement, whereas five did not.
“These highly qualified nurses have either a doctoral or master’s degree in nursing, and their impact on both reducing costs and improving quality of care is significant,” said Marilyn Rantz, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, the study’s lead author. “Most of the care nursing home residents need can be provided right there in the nursing home. With the APRNs’ advanced training, they have been able to help the nursing home staff recognize issues early and identify declines in health status quickly so that evidence-based interventions could be implemented to help avert problems such as hospital transfers or emergency room visits.”
This article appeared in the McKnight’s Business Daily, a joint effort of McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
