What Are We Really Paying For?
I am not writing this as a healthcare executive or a nursing administrator. I am writing as a father who watched his NICU baby experience care that I believe was compromised by dangerously inadequate staffing. Watching your child depend on a system that may not have enough nurses to meet every need changes you forever.
My experience sparked a difficult question: Are we paying for quality care, or simply paying for the name on the building?
There is a saying that you get what you pay for. But what happens when patients pay the same high price while staffing, time, and attention may fall short of what their babies need? Patients pay financially, but they can also pay through delayed care, missed assessments, and potentially longer hospital stays.
I watched my baby placed in assignments where one nurse was responsible for four infants. I urge nurses working four-baby assignments to seriously consider the risks. When every baby needs a feeding, a thorough assessment, medications, documentation, and unexpected interventions—such as a failed IV or a feeding tube coming out—there are only so many minutes in an hour. Thirty minutes per baby for a full feeding, assessment, and unexpected problems leaves little room for anything to go wrong. Can every assessment be as thorough as it needs to be under those conditions?
This should not be dismissed as simply the reality of nursing. NICU staffing practices vary, and professional guidance emphasizes matching staffing to infant acuity and care needs. Nurses deserve the resources to do their jobs safely, and parents deserve confidence that their children are receiving the attention they need.
The concerns extend beyond staffing. I am also questioning the reported pay disparity in which experienced Novant nurses with more than five years in the specialty earn less per hour than new-graduate nurses in the same specialty at Atrium Health. If confirmed in comparable positions, what message does that send about experience, retention, and the value placed on seasoned nurses?
Now, Novant has announced that its maximum employer retirement match will decrease from 6% to 4%, effective January 1, 2027. That is another change employees must factor into their financial futures. These decisions deserve honest scrutiny, especially when experienced nurses are essential to safe patient care.
I believe Atrium’s staffing approach gave my family a different point of comparison. I want to understand why staffing and support can look different between health systems while families face enormous bills and equally vulnerable moments.
This is not about attacking nurses. It is about standing beside them. Nurses cannot provide the care they want to give if they are stretched beyond what is reasonable. Patients should not have to wonder whether a preventable staffing shortage affected their care.
The Novant Patient Voice exists to ask these questions, listen to frontline nurses, examine the facts, and push for accountability and meaningful change.
Because patients deserve more than a hospital bill. They deserve safe care. Nurses deserve the staffing and compensation to provide it. And parents deserve to know that their most vulnerable children are not paying the price for decisions made above the bedside.
Leave a Reply