A nurse practitioner service for nursing and residential care homes

An economic component was added retrospectively to an evaluation that sought to discover whether the provision of a Nurse Practitioner service would improve the health of nursing and residential home residents (Jerram, 2001). The residents of 28 homes on the south coast were recruited; 191 residents in 14 study homes and 154 residents in control group homes who would continue to receive routine care. The combined study also aimed to examine whether the nurse practitioner service would improve residents’ access to health care and reduce GPs workload, and to estimate the relative cost implications. An important part of the research was to estimate unit costs for the Nurse Practitioner (NP). NPs have advanced skills in assessment and clinical decision-making and work with many client groups and in different service contexts (Horrocks et al., 2002). It was important therefore that a unit cost was estimated for this study that reflected the resources and working patterns put in place to support this client group. This short article outlines the service-specific estimation work following the four-stage methodology summarised in Netten and Beecham (1999).