Role of Nurses in Reducing Health Care Costs in a Faith Based Health Institutions: A Case of PCEA Tumutumu Hospital, Kenya

摘要

Introduction:Nurses are an essential component of the health care workforce; are the largest professional group in the hospital and utilize a lot of resources since they work more directly with the patient. Nurses can therefore play an important role in helping reduce costs in terms of proper utilization of consumable materials and by taking care of hospital equipment. PCEA Tumutumu Hospital has been operating on declining donations forcing the hospital to shift the cost of health care to the patient hence the cost of care has gone up. A wide spectrum of measures can be initiated in hospitals for cost reduction through optimum utilization of available resources without compromising the quality of care. This study examined how nurses can contribute to cost reduction at PCEA Tumutumu Hospital through effective utilization of health supplies and equipments, and knowing relationship between cost of supplies and health care cost. Method: This was across sectional study with a sample of all 60 nurses who work at PCEA Tumutumu Hospital. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential. Results:The study found that nurses’ knowledge of relationship between supplies and health care cost is generally poor, and that nurses are hardly engaged in planning and budgetary processes of the hospital. On utilization of supplies, the study established that nurses’ use of resources in the hospital was generally fair. Discussion: The nurses seemed to be more careful while using equipment where the patient is directly involved and less careful where the patient is not directly involved.The study established that unit change in variations in utilization of health supplies results to 19% increase in variations in cost containment efforts, a unit increase in utilization of health equipment results in 24% increase in cost containment efforts and a unit increase in nurses knowledge of supplies and cost of services results in a decrease of 5.1% in cost containment efforts.It is recommended that nurses need awareness on the relationship between supplies and health care cost so as to enable them make more cost conscious decisions. Nurses ought to be engaged in planning and budgetary processes of the hospital so as to improve their knowledge of financial implication of the procedures they carry out in health care delivery.