Action Needed Before Dec. 23!
A special note from MNA President Linda Hamilton:
Contact CMS on Proposed Rule Changes: START HERE or tell others to go to mnnurses.org/CMS
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) has proposed changes to rules regarding hospitals that will severely impact Nursing Practice. Read a partial list below. Read the whole document on the CMS website.
Billed as changes to “lift burdensome and duplicative regulations,” many of these changes represent a real threat to the autonomous practice and patient advocacy role of Registered Nurses. In developing these proposals, CMS obviously chose to accept blindly the anecdotal examples of the American Hospital Association (AHA).
No attempt was made by CMS to reach out to organizations that represent registered nurses in these settings so that direct care/front line RNs could participate in the consultative stage of these proposed changes.
Imagine how drastically your nursing practice would change for the worse if your patients’ caregivers or family members were allowed to give them medications in the hospital? That is just one of many recent changes proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid as conditions of participation.
I, along with our colleagues across the nation of National Nurses United are very concerned about this potential assault on our practice. NNU has submitted a formal organizational response (read it here)
I also urge individual MNA members to submit comments before the deadline. Click on this link to submit your own comments on these egregious proposed changes
Forward this memo to colleagues, or tell them to visit mnnurses.org/cms.
The Deadline for comments is: 5 pm EST, December 23, 2011.
Thanks for your continued support,
Linda Hamilton, RN President, Minnesota Nurses Association and Vice President, National Nurses United
