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.