Calculating the Cost of RN Turnover
And the Opportunity of Reducing Turnover and Contract RN Labor
It is budget season at most hospitals.
Has the cost of RN turnover nearly destroyed your hospital budget the last few years? If so, do you have a plan based on real data and insights to reduce RN turnover?
CareLuminate is excited to help hospitals, especially those in regions we are measuring, make powerful changes based on the feedback of their nurses that will result in reduced RN labor costs.
Here is a step-by-step workflow to calculate a saving target for your hospital in 2024!
Step 1: Calculate the Costs of Individual RN Turnover
NSI Nursing Solutions did some great work in calculating the average cost of RN turnover (see https://nsinursingsolutions.com/Documents/Library/NSI_National_Health_Care_Retention_Report.pdf). They estimated that each RN that leaves costs their hospital $52,358. You can use their number, or estimate the amount yourself using the below CareLuminate calculator.
Step 2: Calculate your Targets for RN Turnover and Travel Nursing
Setting your targets for the percent of nurses that are travel nurses and the percent of nurses that turn over can be eye opening. Here are some pre-set values that you can use for this calculation:
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Insert the cost of nurse turnover per nurse from your calculations in step 1.
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We pre-set the 2023 nurse turnover rate to 28.8%--which is the percent of nurses who report plans in their interviews with us to leave their job.
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The estimates of nurse hourly pay and travel nurse pay are from NSI Nursing Solutions (https://nsinursingsolutions.com/Documents/Library/NSI_National_Health_Care_Retention_Report.pdf)
CareLuminate Can Help
Retaining your nurses can't be as simple as just listening to them, learning from other excellent hospitals, and making simple, straight-forward changes, can it?
It is just that simple for most hospitals. Our researchers are constantly shocked in the 100+ phone nurse interviews we do every week at the feedback of nurses and why they plan to leave. Many of the drivers for turnover they report are so avoidable. You can see some insights about those here.
Most nurses want to be loyal to an organization that is loyal to them and great patient care. Some policies and approaches in your hospital may surprise you from a nurse perspective how they feel. Let us help your team listen, learn and improve.,