On November 6, 2018,Massachusetts voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have mandated nurse staffing ratios. Passage of Massachusetts’ “Patient Safety Act” would have capped the maximum number of patients that could be assigned to each registered nurse in Massachusetts hospitals and health care facilities. If the ballot question had passed, hospitals could have been fined up to $25,000 per incident for violating nurse / patient ratios.While thirteen states (CA, CT, IL, MN, NV, NJ, NY, OH, OR, RI, TX, VT and MA) address nurse staffing in their regulations, California is the only state that has implemented mandatory nurse staffing limits. Massachusetts’s existing regulations only mandate nurse staffing levels in intensive care units.
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