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March 19, 2006 - The Massachusetts Nurses Association has a champion in Rep. Peter Koutoujian, who is carrying the union’s water on a bid to mandate nurse staffing rates in hospitals.
But the true ally on Beacon Hill for nurses and hospitalized patients is Sen. Richard Moore, who sees a pending “compromise” on this issue for the complete fraud that it is.
“Sadly, the bill before us that has been billed as a ‘compromise’ is a sham,” Moore said yesterday. “It reads as though it was written by the MNA, as, in effect, it was.”
Good for Moore for standing up to the union. Would that Koutoujian had done so.
The union has been lobbying for a new law setting minimum nurse-patient ratios for years, arguing that such a law is needed to guarantee patient safety. Never mind fears that such over-regulation would penalize small hospitals, restrict access to care and drive up costs for everyone.
Hospitals and nurse managers, understandably, have resisted government micromanagement. But fearing a strict ratio bill would pass this session they came to the table. Yesterday, Koutoujian’s committee released a re-draft of the union’s bill and declared it a “compromise.” Funny, though - no one but the MNA and its supporters sees it that way.
Because at its core, the bill still mandates how hospitals - from Boston’s huge teaching hospitals to a tiny community hospital in the Berkshires - must staff their wards. And the only “concession” from the MNA was to have the Department of Public Health set the staffing guidelines instead of having them written into law.
The bill could still be amended before it reaches the floor, and we expect Moore and some of his colleagues to do what they can to fix it. We know Koutoujian and the MNA won’t.
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