Nursing Shortage Helps Drive the Increase in Health Care Costs

In parts of the country the nursing shortage is quite critical. Most of Joe Public will not realize it until they need care, and even then they may not because of industry use of high patient to staff ratio's and the use of mandatory overtime. Some facilities that are able to financially bring in agency staff to cover the holes. However all of this costs money, and it also drives nurses from the profession. It becomes a vicious cycle.

Nearly every person in this country at some point comes into contact with the health care system, which means you will utilize the skills of nurses. We must have nurses in order to have a health care system, and we must have nurses who are not so overworked that they are making life threatening errors. And if we are to help decrease the cost of health care we must also increase the number of nurses we have.

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