The effects of California minimum nurse staffing laws on nurse labor and patient mortality in skilled nursing facilities

Patricia K. Tong

Health Economics, 2011, vol. 20, issue 7, 802-816

Abstract: This article investigates how a change in minimum nurse staffing regulation for California skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) affects nurse employment and how induced changes in nurse staffing affect patient mortality. In 2000, legislation increased the minimum nurse staffing standard and altered the calculation of nurse staffing, which created incentives to shift employment to lower skilled nurse labor. SNFs constrained by the new regulation increase absolute and relative hours worked by the lowest skilled type of nurse. Using this regulation change to instrument for measured nurse staffing levels, it is determined that increases in nurse staffing reduce on‐site SNF patient mortality. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.1638

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:20:y:2011:i:7:p:802-816

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().