NOTES ON NURSING

Healing the Hospital Hierarchy   Most people in health care understand and accept the need for clinical hierarchies. The problem is that we aren’t usually prepared for them; nor are we given protocols for resolving the inevitable tensions that arise over appropriate care.

LABOR UPDATE

Income Inequality Shapes MN Tax Debate   Even in middle-class, middle-American Minnesota, income inequality is rising. It’s not a new phenomenon.

HEALTH CARE

New Database Reveals Thousands of Hospital Violation Reports    Hospitals make mistakes, sometimes deadly mistakes. A patient may get the wrong medication or even undergo surgery intended for another person. When errors like these are reported, state and federal officials inspect the hospital in question and file a detailed report. Now, for the first time, this vital information on the quality and safety of the nation’s hospitals has been made available to the public online.

Unhealthiest Counties Lead in Preventable Hospitals Stays    The least-healthy counties experienced 82.8 preventable hospital stays per 1,000 Medicare enrollees, while in the healthiest counties the rate was 57.2 per 1,000. The rest of the nation’s counties experienced 74 preventable hospital stays per 1,000 Medicare enrollees.

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.

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Standards of Care Update

The Standards of Care Act, our bill to establish patient assignments limits, had its third hearing today in the House Health and Human Services Policy committee. The bill passed with amendments, despite serious objections from the hospitals. As amended, the bill has a narrower focus than its original version, but a delivers a victory for patients and nurses by laying a strong foundation for documenting the crisis of patient risk in Minnesota that nurses witness every day. In fact, Committee Chair Rep. Tina Liebling of Rochester offered a strong endorsement of MNA’s concerns when she stated “there is broad agreement that there is a problem.”

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