When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

This blog is a follow-up to my most recent blog in which I discussed the new regulations coming from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regarding hospital-acquired conditions.

As of October 2009, CMS will no longer reimburse hospitals for things such as pressure ulcers, patient falls, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, vascular catheter-associated infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia. CMS has decided they shouldn’t pay for problems caused by institutional error or poor nursing care.

While some are busy finding fault with these new regulations, others see this as a golden opportunity for nurses to get the recognition and the working conditions they deserve. They say it’s an ideal time to highlight the link between quality nursing care and good outcomes.

For the record, nurses thought about these things long before CMS did.

In 2004, with the direction of nurses, the National Quality Forum (a nonprofit quality-measurement organization) developed its own list of 15 “nursing-sensitive care measures.” In a nutshell, the committee said that collecting data on the relationship between good nursing care and good outcomes has never been a priority—perhaps because of the expense involved.

Looks as if things may be changing, though.

Nurses have known all along, of course, that outcomes are better with good nursing care, made possible by adequate staffing and the right tools. Most hospitals have chosen to ignore what seems obvious because of cost considerations, but maybe CMS has finally gotten their attention: Provide good nursing care or lose money—not a difficult concept.

To paraphrase one nursing executive: Nurses now will be able to make an economic case to administrators that investing in their nursing staff is not only the right thing to do, it's also good business.

What do you think?