Last Friday, MNA, in consultation with our legislative allies, agreed to amend the Standards of Care Act to create a procedure which will provide Minnesota-specific data on issues of nurse staffing transparency as it relates to patient outcomes. We agreed to language in the House with an understanding that we would work on adding more detail with respect to reporting requirements.
We learned that legislators had too many questions about the staffing situation, and not enough hard data specific to Minnesota hospitals. So we shifted our focus to a framework that would improve transparency by requiring hospitals to report their staffing on a quarterly basis. MNA took our proposed staffing standards out of the bill in order to improve our chances at creating the most robust reporting system reflecting real nursing hours per patient day.
On Friday both MNA and MHA as well as Chair Liebling acknowledged that the new language was just the beginning, not the final legislation.
Today the Standards of Care Act had its first hearing in the Senate, in the Health Human Services and Housing committee. Chief Author Senator Jeff Hayden began the hearing with a “delete all” amendment, which struck all of the original language and replaced it with language similar to what was discussed on Friday in the House, with more specificity tying staffing reporting to certain health outcomes like cardiac arrest, infection, falls and pressure ulcers.
The hospitals loudly objected to our revised language, claiming once again that there is no staffing or safety problem in Minnesota. If that were true, what would be the harm in requiring them to report their nurse staffing and health outcomes?
The Senate Health Human Services and Housing Committee will come back at 6:00 pm tonight, giving senators more time to study the matter. We will send out an update as soon as there is news.