About

Dr. Olga Yakusheva is an economist and a Professor of Nursing and Public Health at the University of Michigan. Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Science in applied mathematics and advanced degrees in economics, culminating in a Ph.D. in economics. Her expertise lies in economic theory, methods, and big data analytics. She is an internationally recognized expert on the economic value of nursing and the contribution of nurses to patient, societal, and organizational outcomes. Dr. Yakusheva has authored over 70 data-driven publications in high-impact economics, policy, and health services research journals, serving as the lead author on 34 of these works. She is currently serving as an Economics Editor for the International Journal of Nursing Studies and is actively involved in initiatives to frame and articulate the economic value of the nursing profession, including leading efforts for the American Nurses Association. Her research is supported by multiple grants focusing on nursing certification, staffing, and healthcare outcomes, and she has contributed to advancing understanding of how nursing impacts healthcare quality and costs.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Nursing
• Psychology
• Emergency medicine
• Family medicine

Selected publications

• Organizational Resilience in Critical Care Nursing: Perspectives from a Large National Health System

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Saving Healthcare Costs in the Real-World: Implementation of CAPABLE in Population-Based Care

  Journal of Applied Gerontology · 2026-03-03 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  The need for evidence-based services that help older adults thrive in the community aligns with the economic need to lower costs while achieving better outcomes. Some hospitals with global budgets have started paying for community-based care to decrease hospitalizations. We evaluated health, utilization, and cost outcomes associated with CAPABLE, a time-limited intervention to improve daily function, among 205 participants. The Johns Hopkins Hospital has paid for CAPABLE because it may decrease avoidable hospitalizations while improving outcomes. We used a difference-in-difference approach to compare outcomes for participants and non-participants. Avoidable charges were significantly less for CAPABLE participants compared to non-participants (p = 0.02) between 2016 and 2022. While not achieving statistical significance, participants experienced fewer avoidable hospitals stays and readmissions. Participants had significant improvements in functional outcomes and decreased depression scores. Implementing CAPABLE has potential to yield cost-saving and health improving benefits for hospitals with global budgets and insurers by reducing preventable hospitalizations.

  PublisherDOI

• Associations Between Specialty Registered Nurse Certification and Patient Outcomes: A Nurse–Patient Level Analysis

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Staffing Adequacy

  Nursing Administration Quarterly · 2026-03-17

  articleSenior author

  As 2026 launches and hospitals consider the Joint Commission's revisions of National Performance Goals (NPGs), there is emphasis on the importance of nurses in the definition and leadership of organizational staffing adequacy in the delivery of patient care. This manuscript explores the initial public response to the NPGs' announcement, the complexity of the requirement, existing nurse staffing legislation, and managing the narrative of nurse staffing for executives and leaders. It also begins to define "staffing adequacy" using a framework of nursing numbers, knowledge, and autonomous practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Nursing Leadership Strategies in a New Paradigm for Nursing's Economic Value

  JONA The Journal of Nursing Administration · 2025-11-13

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Nursing leaders increasingly recognize that, in today's complex healthcare environment, nurses are a crucial revenue-generating human capital asset, not just a costly labor input. In this article, the authors discuss nursing leadership strategies to amplify nursing's economic value to healthcare organizations.

  PublisherDOI

• Organizational Resilience in Healthcare: A Scoping Review

  Journal of Healthcare Management · 2025-05-01 · 6 citations

  reviewOpen access

  GOAL: Healthcare organizations have always faced challenges, yet the past decade has been particularly difficult due to workforce shortages, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic demands, all of which can impact quality of care. While some healthcare organizations have demonstrated the ability to adapt to such stressors-which has been termed "organizational resilience"-others have not. Most of the research on resilience in healthcare has been on individual clinicians; less is known about how extra-individual groups such as teams, units, and systems develop resilience. Understanding what organizational resilience is, how to measure it, and how healthcare organizations can develop it is essential to responding effectively to future acute and chronic stressors in the healthcare industry. The purpose of this scoping review is to synthesize how organizational resilience is defined and measured in the current healthcare literature and to inform future interventions to improve organizational resilience. METHODS: We searched PubMed and Scopus databases for articles mentioning organizational resilience in healthcare. Eligible sources were those published in English through December 2023 in any format, and that described or measured organizational resilience in healthcare. Titles and abstracts were screened, and information was extracted from eligible articles. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We screened 243 articles and included 97 in our review. Across these studies, organizational resilience was described as a healthcare system's ability to continue functioning and meet its objectives when exposed to stressful stimuli. Reactive and proactive strategies, as well as reflection, were identified as key components of organizational resilience. Four measures of organizational resilience were developed for use in healthcare, but only two have been validated. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Future studies should focus on validating and comparing existing measures of organizational resilience and using them to investigate how organizational resilience may impact quality of care and clinician well-being, allowing the field to move beyond the focus on individual clinician resilience.

  PublisherDOI

• The Interdisciplinary Research Group on Nursing Issues: Advancing Health Services Research, Policy, Regulation, and Practice

  UNC Libraries · 2025-07-26

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Breaking the Paradigm: A Multilevel Economic Framework for Advancing Nursing Value

  Nursing economic$ · 2025-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Retention and Morale in the Icu: Clinician Perspectives on Interprofessional Staffing in Adult Icus

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Trends In Registered Nurse Wages Relative To Other Health Care Occupations, 2012–23

  Health Affairs · 2025-10-01

  articleSenior author

  Registered nurses (RNs) represent the largest clinical workforce in the US. We examined RN wages relative to wages for other health care occupations for the period 2012-23. Although annual inflation-adjusted wages increased across all health care occupations, RNs experienced the smallest growth (0.51 percent), and nursing assistants experienced the greatest (1.48 percent). Comparing 2012 to 2023, wage gaps between RNs narrowed compared with some professions and widened compared with others.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Marianne Weiss

  68 shared

• Kathleen L. Bobay

  Loyola University Chicago

  42 shared

• Debra L. Oswald

  25 shared

• Kandice A. Kapinos

  RAND Corporation

  22 shared

• Julie Bynum

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  18 shared

• Matthew A. Davis

  15 shared

• Deena Kelly Costa

  Yale University

  14 shared

• Peter I. Buerhaus

  Montana State University

  11 shared

Labs

• Olga Yakusheva's LabPI

Education

• Post-Doctoral , Health Policy and Management

  Yale University

  2012

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of Illinois System

  2005

Awards & honors

• Friend of Nursing Award, Rho Theta Sigma Chapter of the Nati…
• Distinguished Research Fellow, Center for Health Outcomes an…
• Best of AcademyHealth Nomination, 2018
• Best of Interdisciplinary Research Group on Nursing Issues,…
• Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society of Nursing Research Team of th…