According to the highest official in the Cellucci Administration's agency dealing with health care workforce issues, one of the solutions to the current and future shortage of health care workers is state-mandated staffing requirements. "The fact that an official in the executive branch of our state government is recommending solutions already put forth by the MNA in the legislative branch (our safe staffing bill) is promising news that policymakers are starting to get the message MNA has been sending: there is no solution to the shortage of nurses unless and until we guarantee safe staffing levels and improve working conditions for nurses," said Charles Stefanini, MNA Director of Legislation and Government Affairs.

The recommendation for mandated staffing requirements was made during a presentation at the March meeting of the Governor's Massachusetts Task Force, by Division of Health Care Finance and Policy Commission Louis I. Freedman. Many of the solutions that Freemdman detailed have been crafted into legislation as part of the MNA's legislative agenda (see Page 8 for listing of bills).

The solutions he proposes include increasing scholarships and education grants, similar to what has been proposed by Sen. Richard Moore; increases in salaries and benefits, mandate staffing requirements and improved working conditions. 

Julie Pinkham, the MNA Executive Director who sits on the commission, has been advocating for many of these positions since joining the group. She was encouraged by the identification of staffing by the administration, and hopes it sends a signal to the legislature that the time is now to pass the MNA staffing bill. However, she is concerned about any language related to solutions that discuss job redesign, which was also listed by Commissioner Freedman.

"We intend to meet with the Commissioner and others within the legislature and the administration to make sure they understand that nurses and the MNA will not accept any efforts to deal with this nursing shortage by de-skilling the workforce, and/or replacing nurses with unlicensed personnel. Our bill is very clear on that. One of the reasons we are in the mess we are in now is because of attempts made in the early 90s to redesign the workplace," Pinkham said.   
 
 

Back to MassNurse