Toward Creating a Business Alliance

Business leaders and health care experts gathered on December 8 to discuss the implications of health reform, resolving to create a Business Alliance that will develop collaborative solutions to the nursing shortage. The innovative Business Summit on Healthcare: A Framework for Reform was sponsored by the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, the Horizon Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Jersey Nursing Initiative. 

 

“Costs have more than doubled in the last decade for employers. Health care spending is growing and we cannot afford to keep spending this much per year,” warned Katie Strong Hays, executive director of congressional and public affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

 

Using Camden as a microcosm for the state, Jeffrey Brenner, M.D., department of family medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, presented the findings of his detailed study on the costs and quality of local care. He found that a poorly managed health care system is costing New Jersey taxpayers millions of dollars annually, while providing less effective care to residents in need. “The bottom line is that businesses in New Jersey are paying a lot of money for poor quality care… Most of the fix to all of this is primary care and nursing,” said Brenner.

 

To better address the challenging heath care needs of his community, Brenner has created a pilot program that establishes neighborhood health exchanges that maximize physician and nurse effectiveness and reduce the need for costly emergency room visits. Through the Camden Coalition of Heath Care Providers, Brenner and his colleagues who are social workers, nurses, physicians, and hospital administrators are creating powerful solutions to the health care crisis that are inexpensive compared to hospitalization and emergency care and can be replicated elsewhere in the state.

 

A number of speakers said that creating solutions to the looming nurse faculty shortage will be key to the success of health care reform. Susan Bakewell-Sachs, Ph.D., R.N., P.N.P.-B.C. dean of the School of Nursing, Health and Exercise Science at The College of New Jersey, Robert Wise, president of the Hunterdon Medical Center and Sonia Delgado, M.G.A, senior associate with the Princeton Public Affairs Group provided expert analysis of the current situation. Bakewell-Sachs warned attendees to expect “significant nurse retirements in the next five years.”

 

New Jersey should “consider creating a stimulus program for nursing” in the state, Wise said. He recommended that businesses view nursing as a “value and not a cost.” Wise encouraged greater nurse collaboration and said that solutions to the current crisis will be found locally. He urged participants to become involved in addressing issues related to the nurse faculty shortage and to pool local resources to best address the nursing crises in their communities.