Nursing shortages and patient outcomes
利用高频数据研究护士短缺对住院患者死亡率的影响，发现拥有大学学历的护士短缺会使患者死亡几率增加约10%，而增加其医院特定经验可降低死亡率。
This paper examines the effect of nurse shortages on healthcare production. Employing novel high-frequency data, we examine what effect the absence of nursing staff has on inpatient mortality and other outcomes associated with nursing care. We find significant adverse mortality impacts of shortages of nurses with degree-level qualifications: for the average ward, the absence of a nurse with university degree-equivalent level training increases the odds of a patient death by approximately 10%, while there is no effect of shortages of less qualified nursing assistants. For qualified nurses, there are returns to firm (hospital) specific human capital: increasing the average firm-specific experience among degree qualified nurses by one year is associated with an 8% reduction in the odds of a patient death, the equivalent to adding three-quarters of an extra qualified nurse to the ward. Adverse mortality impacts of shortages are particularly concentrated among patients of relatively low, rather than high, clinical severity. The largest impacts are for those diagnosed with sepsis, a condition where early detection is important for survival and where nurses have a central role in detection and subsequent control.