Maintaining a Healthy Bottom Line: How Nurses Can Impact Healthcare Finances (Podcast)

In 2025, it’s impossible to ignore the costs associated with delivering quality healthcare. Clinical nurses aren’t experts in financial spreadsheets or accounting principles. However, as frontline caregivers they can impact a hospital’s bottom line.

“Healthcare, more than anything else, is a people-driven business,” says Matt Slife, Executive Director for Nursing Operations at Cleveland Clinic. “If you don’t have patients coming in, you’re not going to make money regardless of what your cost structure looks like. So, if you get the right [employees] in the right seats and they can think critically on how to make the operation better, things should go fine long term.”

Slife talks about the role nurses can play in healthcare finances in the most recent episode of Cleveland Clinic’s Nurse Essentials podcast. He shares:

• How healthcare organizations achieve long-term financial stability
• Nurse-driven innovations that have saved hospitals money
• What caregivers should learn about their organization’s financial health
• The financial implications of access to care and the patient experience
• Advice for nursing leaders to educate caregivers on the implications of finance

Click the podcast player above to listen to the episode now, or read on for a short, edited excerpt. Check out more Nurse Essentials episodes at my.clevelandclinic.org/podcasts/nurse-essentials or wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast excerpt

Podcast host Carol Pehotsky, DNP, RN, NEA-BC: What are some things that any nurse should really take upon themselves to learn – things that they should stay in tune to in terms of the financial health of their organizations?

Slife: I think that Dr. Mihaljevic [Cleveland Clinic CEO and President] says it well: Think of the organization as if it was your home. And so, if you go back, would you negotiate to buy a car and take the first price the salesman gave you? Probably not. No. Would you buy multiple streaming services that only work half the time? Probably not. Would you buy a bulk pack of milk of three and know you're only going to use one?

Clinicians actually have the most visibility to where waste could be. So, I think that's what we're looking for. Not only how do you optimize the resources from a labor standpoint, but also supplies, equipment, services. A lot of times we have things that we bought that we don't use as much. So, think about how we could optimize and share them across the enterprise.