A bill that would require minimum staffing for nurses in D.C. hospitals was approved by the D.C. Council's business committee Tuesday and will now advance to the health committee for consideration. Under the proposed legislation, acute-care and psychiatric hospitals would be required to keep a certain ratio of nurses on duty for patients at all times under threat of a $25,000 a day penalty. The rules range from a 1:1 ratio in the operating room to a 1:6 ratio in behavioral health units. A similar measure floundered in the health committee in 2013. But earlier this year, council chairman Phil Mendelson revived the legislation
A nurse practitioner in Connecticut pleaded guilty in June to taking $83,000 in kickbacks from a drug company in exchange for prescribing its high-priced drug to treat cancer pain. In some cases, she delivered promotional talks attended only by herself and a company sales representative. But when the federal government released data Tuesday on payments by drug and device companies to doctors and teaching hospitals, the payments to nurse practitioner Heather Alfonso, 42, were nowhere to be found. That's because the federal Physician Payment Sunshine Act doesn't require companies to publicly report payments to nurse practitioners or physician assistants, even though they are allowed to write prescriptions in most states.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will announce Thursday that it's going to crack down on hospitals, for the first time ever, to prevent an epidemic of back and arm injuries among nursing employees. Nurses and nursing assistants suffer more of those debilitating injuries than any other occupation, and those injuries are caused mainly by moving and lifting patients. As NPR reported earlier this year in a five-part series, Injured Nurses, many of those workers end up having grueling operations and quitting their jobs. Yet, most hospitals have done little to prevent the injuries — even though studies show they could.
About 800 nursing assistants and other workers at two Connecticut hospitals voted Friday not to establish a union. Workers at Danbury Hospital and New Milford Hospital had said inadequate staffing and better treatment were top concerns in the drive to unionize. AFT Connecticut led the organizing drive and wanted to negotiate for higher pay, which is now between $12 and $20 an hour. Vote tallies were not available late Friday, but Matt O'Connor, spokesman for AFT Connecticut, said in an emailed statement that the vote was decided by a narrow margin.
A Massachusetts agency approved the state's first-ever mandate on nurse staffing in hospital intensive care units on Wednesday. The regulations require hospitals to limit patient assignments so each intensive care nurse is responsible for no more than two patients. The Health Policy Commission voted unanimously to apply the rules to all ICUs, including special units for burn patients, children, and premature babies. The vote came after commissioners had raised concerns that neonatal intensive care units in particular are different from adult ICUs and will probably have a harder time complying with the regulations because their patient loads are less predictable.