Adding Nurse Practitioners to Inpatient Teams: Making the Financial Case for Success

Nurse practitioners (NPs) are increasingly being added to inpatient care teams to meet demands for cost-effective, high quality, and safe patient care. NPs have been shown to increase adherence to evidence-based processes of care, decrease unnecessary resource utilization, enhance positive patient experience, and improve patient care outcomes such as ideal length of stay, reduced unexpected readmissions, and reduced hospital-acquired complications.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 National reports have emphasized the evidence supporting the use of this unique provider type and have emphasized the need to expand this workforce and continue to explore their impact within the health care team, on cost effectiveness and on quality outcomes.15, 16 and 17 Despite evidence supporting the case for NPs, organizational economic and financial drivers demand a comprehensive business case before implementation of an NP team. This article reviews an academic medical center's experience with advanced practice proposals and the development of a standardized mechanism for submission and evaluation.