Opportunity Cost of Staff Substitution An opportunity cost measures the relative benefit of two alternative uses of the same resource. A regional Urgent Care Center would like to know the opportunity cost of replacing one physician with a nurse practitioner. Instead of hiring 4 physicians, they would hire 3 physicians and 1 NP. This will lower total salary cost. Salaries of physicians and NP are given in your Cost & Benefit document. The consequence of this decision will be a reduction in the number of addeitional statistical lives that the UCC can save each year. The additional lives that would be saved by 3 physicians versus 4 physicians is given in your Cost & Benefit document. Calculate the opportunity cost of having 3 physicians and 1 nurse practitioner instead of having 4 physicians, where the opportunity cost will have this meaning: For every 1 additional life that we save with 3 physicians and 1 nurse practitioner, we are sacrificing the opportunity to save x additional lives by hiring 4 physicians instead. Question 1: First, find the total cost of each staffing option. How much do we spend in total when we hire 3 physicians and one nurse practitioner? How much do we spend in total when we hire 4 physicians