Impact of California Mandated Acute Care Hospital Nurse Staffing Ratios: A Literature Synthesis
- 1 August 2010
- journal article
- review article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Policy, politics & nursing practice
- Vol. 11 (3), 184-201
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1527154410392240
Abstract
California is the first state to enact legislation mandating minimum nurse-to-patient ratios at all times in acute care hospitals. This synthesis examines 12 studies of the impact of California’s ratios on patient care cost, quality, and outcomes in acute care hospitals. A key finding from this synthesis is that the implementation of minimum nurse-to-patient ratios reduced the number of patients per licensed nurse and increased the number of worked nursing hours per patient day in hospitals. Another finding is that there were no significant impacts of these improved staffing measures on measures of nursing quality and patient safety indicators across hospitals. A critical observation may be that adverse outcomes did not increase despite the increasing patient severity reflected in case mix index. We cautiously posit that this finding may actually suggest an impact of ratios in preventing adverse events in the presence of increased patient risk.Keywords
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