Impact of Healthcare Regulations on Nursing Practice

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
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1NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Consider the current laws and regulations that affect healthcare operations in your state.
How do these regulations impact nursing practice? How do current healthcare finance
regulations, specifically value-based purchasing, impact the quality of care that is provided?
The healthcare industry has been identified as the most dynamic industry which is
continually subjected to diverse patient needs and novel therapeutic inventions. In order to
promote effective care and improve the quality of service delivery, every year healthcare laws
and regulations are revised. This paper intends to discuss the legislation on nurse staffing in
Massachusetts and the implication of the legislation on nursing practice. The legislation was
passed on June 30th, in the year 2014 by the Masachusetts Governor Deval Patrick as he
signed the Bill H.4228 where it required hospitals to staff ICUs according to 1:1 or 1:2 nurse
to patient ratio (Nursingcenter.com, 2019). The legislation was a compromise between the
Massachusetts Nurses Association that represented a proportion of the state’s Nurses as well
as the Massachusetts Hospital Association. The Masachusetts Hospital Administration voiced
against the mandatory staffing ratio law that was proposed by the MNA in the ballot that was
one of the agenda in the November 2014 elections. The present scenario suggests that
Masachusetts is the second state that is in need of mandatory nurse staffing ratio within the
intensive care unit so as to avoid adverse medical events. The legislation involves two
integral aspects that need attention. The first being the need to develop an acuity tool in order
to standardize staffing levels and the second to establish a minimum to 3 quality indicator
items to monitor public reporting within hospitals (McHugh, Berez & Small, 2013). It can
hence be mentioned that the two elements mentioned above present a relative flexible
approach to the stringent mandatory staffing legislation and ideally takes into consideration
the elements of patient acuity, outcome of nursing care as well as nurse staffing care.
A number of research studies have indicated the presence of a direct relationship
between optimal nurse staffing and a massive reduction in the rate of unexpected mortality