Since 2005, without much success, the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) has been encouraging hospital chief executive officers and/or administrators to set a baseline minimum staffing standard or create policy to protect patient safety (Minnesota Nurses Association, 2017). In 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) implemented a new model of healthcare delivery and payment that was designed to improve quality and reduce costs, but as a result, cost control pressures have been put on nurse staffing levels in order to reduce nurse labor hours and their associated costs (Avalere, 2015). With a goal of making a case for sufficient nurse staffing levels and/or models, the American Nurses Association (ANA) teamed up with Avalere to conduct a targeted review of published literature, government reports, and other publicly available evaluations of nurse staffing and patient outcomes (Avalere, 2015). Their key findings with appropriate nurse staffing included: nurse staffing models should consider the number of nurses, the nurse-to-patient ratios and staffing should be adjusted to account for unit and shift level factors; helps to achieve clinical and economic improvement in patient care; improves patient satisfaction and patient quality of life; decreases/reduces: medical and medication errors, patient mortality,…
