Mayo Clinic Exemption Added to Nurse Staffing Bill
St. Paul, MN (KROC-AM News) - There has been a lot of movement today in St. Paul concerning Mayo Clinic's efforts to kill the proposed Keep Nurses at the Bedside Act.
The bill is still very much alive at the State Capitol, but as it stands this evening, it now includes language that carves out an exemption for Mayo Clinic. Bill Werner with the Minnesota News Network reports the nurse-staffing legislation has been removed from the omnibus Health and Human Services budget bill that is being finalized by a House-Senate conference committee.
He says a separate conference committee has been formed to finalize the KNABA bill and bring it to the State House and Senate for final votes before the mandated end of the legislative session on Monday. Mayo Clinic, who along with other members of the Minnesota Hospitals Association, has been fighting to keep the bill from being passed, has yet to indicate if the proposed exemption addresses the concerns it expressed in an email to the governor and legislative leaders that warned that more than $4 billion and planned investments in Minnesota would be shifted to other states if the nurse-staffing proposal becomes law.
The Minnesota Nurses Association has long fought for the proposal, which would give nurses significant representation on committees that would set staffing levels in Minnesota hospitals. The Hospitals Association contends that would create an extra level of bureaucracy that would greatly harm their already strained finances and patient care.
