The Legislature's Labor Committee is considering
LD 1639, which would implement rigid patient to nurse ratios in hospitals. This legislation would increase the cost of healthcare in Maine, limit access to hospital care, and decrease hospital quality.
What this legislation would do:
- Cost well over $100 million. When nearly half of Maine hospitals were operating on negative margins before the pandemic, hospitals simply cannot absorb the substantial, increased costs from mandated ratios;
- Limit access to hospital care. Hospitals that can't meet the rigid ratios will have to close beds units or even whole facilities..This means ill and injured Mainers may have to travel farther for care causing unnecessary and potentially dangerous delays; and
- Strip nurses of autonomy and flexibility. Nurses staff units based on the condition of the patients, the skill and experience of the nurses on duty and even the layout of the care environment.
What this legislation
won't do:
- This legislation won't create a single nurse. Hospitals know we need more nurses, we have job postings for more than 1,000 of them. Only 2.3% of nurses are unemployed in Maine, so hospitals are focusing their efforts on training new nurses and encouraging young people to choose careers in healthcare;
- It won't improve healthcare quality. Only one other state, California, has rigid ratios like envisioned in this bill. Maine's hospital quality routinely is ranked among the best in the country. California's is mediocre at best;
- It won't help recruitment and retention. Nursing homes are governed by mandatory staffing ratios and they have been forced to close beds and whole facilities because of staffing shortages.