Dr. Jeannie Cimiotti was awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing to study the impact of advanced practice nurses on patient outcomes in the hospital setting. The title of the study is “Business Case for Employment of Hospital-Based Advanced Practice Registered Nurses: Scope of Practice, Patient Outcomes, Nurse Retention, Financial Impact” and runs through 2017.
This innovative study will be the first large-scale study of APRNs in hundreds of acute care settings in the U.S. linking their employment and practices with patient outcomes and costs. We will determine if organizational policies regarding APRN scope of practice differ from state regulations and if actual scope of hospital APRN practice affect the quality of care. The cost analysis focuses on cost-savings to hospitals from better patient outcomes, fewer readmission penalties, and reduced expenses associated with costly staff nurse turnover. Thus, we can build the business case for investing in advanced practice registered nurses while at the same time reinforcing the value of APRNs in general as we will be able to document their impact on new outcomes such as mortality, hospital-acquired adverse events, readmissions, and costs