Two more nurse-centric groups last week came out against the ballot question that would impose rigid nurse staffing ratios on all hospitals at all times.
Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts, a non-profit association of home care agencies working with 5,000 nurses across the commonwealth, and VNA Care, which employs 800 visiting nurses throughout the state, joined the
Coalition to Protect Patient Safety in opposition to the proposed nurse staffing ballot question.
“This ballot measure would negatively impact the important work that we do at Home Care Alliance. Thousands of adults and children who are frail, disabled or at the end of their lives depend on home health care nurses to provide them with care when they are unable to travel to get that care,” said Pat Kelleher, executive director of Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts. “If hospitals across Massachusetts need to hire more than 5,000 new nurses, I fear it will pull nurses away from the home health community. There is a tremendous risk that we will simply be unable to sustain a nursing workforce to provide care to those who desperately need us.”
“Providing home healthcare requires nurses to constantly rely on the skills we learned in nursing school, and our experience spending time with patients,” said Holly Chaffee, R.N., CEO of VNA Care. “There is a strong movement toward shifting acute care patients home, but this measure will contribute to the shortage of seasoned nurses in and make it harder to offer those patients appropriate care. VNA Care and other nursing agencies will struggle to fulfill our missions if this measure passes.”
The Home Care Alliance and VNA Care join American Nurses Association Massachusetts, the Organization of Nurse Leaders, the Massachusetts Associations of Colleges of Nursing, the New England Chapter of the Infusion Nurses Society, and other healthcare leaders in opposing the rigid ratio question.