What an unfilled nursing position costs every week.

The components

• Coverage. Travel or agency nurses filling the gap at hourly rates well above employed cost, or overtime for existing staff at premium rates.
• Capacity. Closed beds, delayed procedures, longer waits, diverted admissions. Revenue that does not come back.
• Turnover pressure. Short-staffed units burn out the nurses who stayed, which creates the next vacancy.
• Recruiting cost. Board spend, recruiter hours, and eventually a placement fee.

How to estimate yours

Add the weekly coverage premium (agency or overtime hours times the gap between that rate and the employed rate) to a conservative estimate of weekly lost capacity for the unit. Many organizations land on a figure of several thousand dollars per open role per week; enter your own in the cost per hire calculator, which multiplies it by your time to fill and your annual hires.

Why time to fill matters more than the fee

A $22,500 placement fee is paid once. A $4,500 weekly vacancy cost over a 75-day fill is $48,000, per role, and it repeats for every opening. Cutting time to fill from 75 days to 45 saves more per hire than eliminating the fee entirely, which is why reply speed (the largest driver of time to fill) is the first thing to fix.

What shortens time to fill

1. Replying to applicants within minutes instead of days.
2. Pay and schedule in the posting, so applicants self-qualify.
3. Reaching employed nurses through campaigns rather than waiting for active seekers.
4. Activating the database of past applicants the day a role opens.

The full ranked list is on nurse shortage hiring strategies.