[Antiracism] [Workers' Rights] Nurses & Advocates Outraged

[WMass Jobs With Justice]

From: Diane Scherrer [mailto:dscherrer at mnarn.org] 



P R E S S  R E L E A S E

 

For Immediate Release
Contact: Alex Zaroulis       (617) 549-0358 

July 16, 2008
David Schildmeier (781) 249-0430

 

Nurses/Advocates Outraged by Senate Ways & Means Committee's 

Gutting of Safe Staffing Bill, Which Will Codify Current Unsafe Conditions
in Hospitals and Continue to Place Thousands of Patients in Jeopardy

 

Measure Eliminates House Compromise Bill's Call for Safe Staffing Standards
and Patient Limits, Allowing Hospital Administrators to Continue to Set
Their Own Staffing Levels.  

 

Nurses and patient advocates, who have been awaiting Senate action on
pending legislation to guarantee safe RN staffing and improved patient
safety, are outraged by the Senate Ways and Means Committee's release of a
harmful version of the bill that will allow the state's hospitals to
continue the dangerous and deadly status quo.  

 

The new senate bill removes all key compromise provisions achieved through
negotiations with legislators and key stakeholders which were contained in
the version that passed the House (119-35) on May 22.  The House version
called upon the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to create
industry-wide staffing standards and patient limits to assure safe patient
care in all Massachusetts hospitals.  The new Senate version continues to
place hospital administrators in charge of setting their own staffing
standards, a practice that has led to a health care crisis in Massachusetts,
where more than 45,000 patients a year are injured and more than 2,000
patients - six a day - die from preventable infections and complications
they get in the hospital. The Senate version also guts protections against
the dangerous practice of mandatory overtime, which is key to preventing
medication errors by exhausted staff.

 

Additionally, the Senate bill fails to recognize the overwhelming body of
research that links safe patient outcomes directly to the number of patients
a nurse is caring for at one time. It also greatly broadens  the power of
hospital administrators, who can cut corners and dangerously increase a
nurse's patient load.

 

Under the new law, there would be no uniform standard of care, and instead,
the Department of Pubic Health would only be in charge of enforcing varying
and inadequate standards created by the private sector hospital industry -
including the for profit hospitals. Simply put; this legislation is a
hazardous step backward, and would ensure that current unsafe conditions
continue to deteriorate.  

 

We call upon our senators to reject this bill that is so dangerous to the
public's safety. We ask instead that senators build upon the negotiated
compromise that has already been reached and passed the House.  This would
allow the Department of Public Health to enforce limits that it determines
are in the public's best interest, rather than leaving that critical job to
the very institutions that created the crisis we now face.  

 

The new bill, S. 2805, is scheduled to be taken up for a debate and vote as
early as tomorrow, Thursday, July 17. Nurses and patient advocates are now
mobilizing to urge Senate adoption of amendments that reinstitute the
protections in the House bill.

 

The original compromise bill is supported by more than 130 of the state's
leading health care and consumer advocacy organizations, as well as more
than 80 percent of the bedside nurses  and 70 percent of physicians whose
ability to care for the safety of their patients would be favorably affected
by passage of the House version of the bill.  

###

David Schildmeier
Director of Public Communications
Massachusetts Nurses Association
340 Turnpike St. 
Canton, MA 02021
800-882-2056 x717
781-830-5717
781-821-4445 (fax)
781-249-0430 (cell phone)
dschildmeier at mnarn.org

www.massnurses.org
<file:///C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\david\Application%20Data\Microsoft\Si
gnatures\www.massnurses.org> 

 

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