Committee backs Sen. Brenner bill to improve patient-nurse ratios and patient safety
AUGUSTA — On Wednesday, the Legislature’s Labor and Housing Committee voted in favor of a bill from Sen. Stacy Brenner, D-Scarborough, to help improve patient safety and hospital staff morale by setting minimum patient-nurse ratios in Maine. An amended version of LD 1639, “An Act to Address Unsafe Staffing of Nurses and Improve Patient Care,” received a vote of 8-3 with two members absent.
“I remember with clarity the feeling of walking out of the hospital after a 14-hour nursing shift, with a deep and pervasive sense of dread that I forgot to chart something about one of my patients. I remember times when a meal was a pack of Saltine crackers ripped open and choked down between rooms,” said Sen. Brenner. “The fear of near misses and errors from working over capacity builds a sense of moral injury, one shift at a time. Establishing nurse-patient ratios would give nurses – like me – the ability to provide the care their patients deserve.”
As amended, LD 1639 would establish the Maine Quality Care Act in order to ensure safe direct-care registered nurse — also called “bedside nurse” — staffing assignments in health care facilities, including hospitals, freestanding emergency departments and ambulatory surgical facilities, can provide safe and effective patient care. It would establish minimum direct-care registered nurse staffing requirements based on the patient care unit and patient needs; specify the method to calculate a health care facility’s compliance with the staffing requirements; protect direct-care registered nurses from retaliation; and include notice, record-keeping and enforcement requirements.
“Unsafe staffing ratios put patients and staff at risk. Advanced Practice Registered Nurses order high-risk medications and orders for many complex hospital patients,” said Amy Brown with the Maine Nurse Practitioner Association, in testimony supporting the bill. “We are concerned that the current nurse-patient ratios leave these patients at risk because the nurse is taking care of too many patients and is unable to monitor the patient closely. This can lead to complications and death. Nurse burn-out rates are increasing and if our healthcare system continues to force our nurses to practice in this way, we will continue to lose skilled nurses.”
A 2021 study on sepsis treatment found that for each additional patient per nurse, patients are 7% more likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 60 days, 7% more likely to die within 60 days, and 12% more likely to die in the hospital. Patients also experience longer lengths of stay. A study out of New York about patient ratios states that, “Were hospitals staffed at the 4:1 [patient-nurse] ratio proposed in the legislation, we conservatively estimated 4,370 lives saved and $720 million saved over the 2-year study period in shorter lengths of stay and avoided readmissions.”
Additionally, multiple studies show nurse retention rates increase with safe staffing ratios.
The bill now faces votes in the Senate and House.
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