Two bills being debated at the Minnesota legislature deal with minimum nurse staffing at hospitals and establishing a healthcare advisory board and administrators.
At Mayo Clinic, they want them to fail in the legislative process.
Mayo administrators sent an email to lawmakers promising to move a billion-dollar construction project out of state if those bills pass. The threat includes other projects that for now are expected to be built in Minnesota as first reported by the Minnesota Reformer.
Mayo says those bills would be bad for their bottom line. Advocates are pushing back claiming that the last-minute threat amounts to blackmail.
On Monday, Mayo nurses will share why this legislation is needed at Mayo Clinic Health System facilities, and legislators – including chief authors Senator Erin Murphy (DFL-St. Paul) and Representative Sandra Feist (DFL-New Brighton) – will provide an update on efforts to reach a resolution on the bill for patient care and transparency, and nurse retention.
“Someday, all of us and our loved ones will need care in a hospital,” says a press release from the Minnesota Nurses Association. “When that day comes, we deserve to know our hospital will be staffed with highly-skilled healthcare professionals able to provide the quality care we need and deserve. While there are more registered nurses in Minnesota than ever before, half of all nurses are now considering leaving the profession, citing short staffing as their top concern. The bipartisan Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act is a comprehensive, compromise approach to nurse staffing and retention that would establish committees of direct care workers and management at Minnesota hospitals to discuss what works best for staffing for their patients on a hospital-by-hospital, unit-by-unit level. The bill also includes additional nurse recruitment and retention solutions including workplace violence prevention and loan forgiveness programs.”
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