Clinical and health facilities have a high percentage of health expenditure, which rises annually. The unattainability in the expansion of healthcare mandates the stakeholders to look for alternative approaches that can reduce the high costs associated with running health facilities (Stadhouders et al., 2019). Many cost containment strategies have been implemented, designed and used by clinical officers and nurse managers to solve this issue. A cost containment strategy is used to reduce or maintain the necessary expenses and eliminate unnecessary expenditures (Stadhouders et al., 2019). Cost management, elimination of unit waste, embracing technology and reduction of overtime are examples of cost containment strategies that help reduce costs.
Cost management strategy is essential in a health facility as it facilitates the maintenance of a standard amount of expenditure. Nurse leaders and other nurse staff must be willing to work together to reduce the unnecessary costs in the hospital facility (Stadhouders et al., 2019). This can be achieved through coordination of all activities involving finance and expenditures as well as encourage cooperation at any organizational level. Most importantly, the nurse leaders and staff must collaborate in order to find out what hinders the hospital facility from achieving their profit goal. In this case, adjustments can be made to deal with the identified financial problems of the health facility. Elimination of waste in a health facility is crucial in maintaining a standard expenditure (Montage, 2017). Once the problem has been identified, education and training can be given to the members of the nursing unit on how to reduce wastage. Practices such as going green and embracing green technology help in wastage of energy and environment pollution.
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More importantly is that the healthcare sector continue to run into many costs due to the availability of diverse, unstructured and the ever growing volumes of data. Embracing IT is one way to reduce costs. The developments of technology in health facilities have made work easier for nurses (Montage, 2017). Technology has helped reduce the number of working staff in the nursing units, which translate to reduced expenditures on wages. It has also helped in reducing time wastage, leading to more patients being attended to. Also, reduction of overtime dramatically helps in reducing the expenditure of health facilities. The nurse managers need to make sure that an adequate number of nurses are employed in order to avoid overtime. Enough nurses in the facility ensure that work is completed within the required time, thus saving on overtime costs.
In conclusion, nurses play a huge role in the cost maintenance of a health facility. It is because they make up a big percentage of the health workforce, making it one of their responsibilities as nurses. Health facilities with nurses that unite to avoid high costs and practice the cost containment strategies have their hospitals grow and successful than those who do not. Therefore nurses must know each responsibility including cost containment and make it upon themselves to practice them.
References
Stadhouders N., et al. (2019). Effective healthcare cost-containment policies: A systematic review. Health Policy , 123(1), 71-79.
Montage, B. (2017). Seven Ways for Hospitals to Control Overhead Expenses. Health Management Organization. Retrieved on 19 November 2019, from https://healthmanagement.org/c/hospital/whitepaper/seven-ways-for-hospitals-to-control-overhead-expenses
