The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts urges you to support this bill because we want our Commonwealth’s hospitals to provide quality health care.

This bill would help produce such care by:

• bringing back many nurses who have left bedside-care nursing because they felt that staffing conditions did not allow them to work to ensure the best care for their patients;
• creating programs to increase nursing faculty in nursing schools; and
• offering initiatives (such as scholarships and mentoring program to recruit more nurses.

It would:

• require the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) to set and implement a safe limit on the number of patients a registered nurse is assigned at one time (this limit is to be based on scientific research and testimony from public hearings; staffing levels would be adjusted in accordance with patient needs and requirements using a standardized DPH approved system [acuity] that provides a means of measuring the illness level of the patients on a particular unit and their need for care);
• prohibit mandatory overtime;
• prohibit hospitals from assigning unlicensed workers to perform care that demands licensed nursing expertise;
• protect against the reduction of other members of the healthcare team; and •provide patients with the right and ability to know and demand safe limits.

Furthermore, it would safeguard the rights of hospitals by:

• providing adequate lead times to phase in the new standards:(two years in teaching hospitals, four years in community hospitals);
• providing time-limited financial hardship waivers for eligible hospitals; and providing hospitals with flexibility.

For these reasons we urge you to pass this bill out of your Committee, see that it passed by the entire Legislature and then implemented.

Thank you for your time and attention.