New Jersey Helath Care policy

Staffing legislation in NJ
One of the tenets of healthcare is the provision of adequate healthcare for all patients and the health care needs to be the safest possible that the medics and the facilities can offer. This has been a concern for many institutions yet few states like California have actively enacted the legislations that have to do with staffing legislations. It is indicated that in the past decade, approximately 15 state and the federal government have proposed or successfully enacted the regulations and legislations that address nurse staffing in the acute care hospitals (Reiter K.L. et.al., 2012). This indicates that there is the need to have such legislations put in full operational force in the various health care facilities and cover states, New Jersey not an exemption in this. The patients herein deserve to have adequate care bearing that it is one of the states with the highest number of ageing population that is prone to the effects of the acute health problems mainly associated with the old age.
The staffing legislations take varied forms, the most common that have been discussed across many states being the nurse-to-patient ratio. This is deemed as the most important tenet of nursing since it has outstanding benefits to the patients and the society at large. There needs to be legislations mandating minimum nurse staffing ratios since this will directly impact positively on the working conditions for the nurses that are in a facility, it will also improve the safety of the nurses and also help increase the quality of the care that the patients will be receiving. With the increased number of nurses in the facility, there will be lesser chances of nurses suffering burnouts as a consequence of prolonged shifts or even overtime commitments by the nurses. The decreased burnouts will hence mean the nurses will be lesser exposed to occupational injuries that may come as a consequence of fatigue. These come in the form of needle pricks, falls and other forms of physical injuries that nurses may be subjected to due to fatigue. The patients will also receive the best possible treatment since the chances of wrong medication, negligent procedures, oversights, inaccurate records and such like issues that affect patients will be minimized if the nurses work within the required time span and are relieved of their shifts by the subsequent lot.
There are arguments that such a legislation could be expensive to implement, however, it is worth noting that proper staffing of hospitals with adequate nurses will lead to fewer complications being brought into the hospital that have to be catered for at the expense of the hospital, there will be shorter patient stays in the hospitals hence reduction in operational costs, there will be fewer readmissions hence better for patients and cheaper for the hospital, there will also be lesser need for temporary and travelling nurses hence cheaper for the hospital to use in house nurses only and this legislation will also lead to lowering of the nursing staff turnover. This can only be possible in a condition where there are sufficient numbers of nurses employed in a given facility to help take good care of the patients. This legislation is long overdue for New Jersey health care facilities.
On the opposing perspective, there are the views that find the minimum nurse conditions as to be detrimental to the operations of the health care facilities. As indicated by Reiter K.L. et.al., (2012), there are the arguments that the controversies over the staffing ratios are yet to be cleared for this legislation to be justified. They feel that the benefits are yet to be proven to outweigh the costs of complying with the standards set by such legislations since the potential costs are seen to be substantial. They indicate that of the direct costs of nursing, 80% of it goes to the benefits and salaries, and it has also been indicated that 44% of the direct costs goes to the total direct costs of inpatient care, and another 30% goes to all hospital expenditure. Further, they indicate that the staffing regulations were accompanied by the significant increase in the nurse wages. These indicate that if the regulations are to be implemented, then there will be great financial pressure on the hospitals whose unforeseen consequence will be the use of lower technology, hospital or unit closures, lesser infrastructure investment as well as the reduction in the quality or access which may come as a result of the implementation of the regulations (Sime T. & Fentie W. 2016).
However, these presumed challenges did not take into account the accompanying benefits that will definitely come with the staffing regulations. They are also based on lack of researched data from the various facilities where the implemented regulation works for the good of the hospital and the patients. They are also arguments which only focus on the cost aspect that will be incurred by the hospital management, all at the expense of the benefits that the society and the patients will be deriving from the implementation of such a regulation. From the onset, 90% of the nurses, who are the primary players in the health care, indicate that better staffing rations will result in improved recruitment and retention of nurses (Department of Professional Employees, 2006 ). The staffing regulations will hence ensure that nurses get back to nursing as opposed to the current situation where nurses exit for other professions and jobs that are not in line with their training. This will ensure equitable assignment and higher nurse satisfaction. It will also enable matching of patient care needs to help achieve better patient outcomes. Indeed, According to Joint Commission research, “Staffing was found to be a contributing factor in 24% of all unanticipated events resulting in patient death, injury or permanent loss of function.” (API Helath Care, 2014). Such incidences can and must be avoided for being replicated and perpetuated in NJ as the solution is in the staffing regulation as proposed above. The cost cutting factor is yet another benefit that comes with the staffing regulation since there will be considered patient acuity and in the process achieving the lowered care cost.
The staffing regulation is important to NJ since it will help increase the number of RNs in the health care facilities, in effect improving the quality of health care and reducing the patient stay while waiting for health care in the facilities. It will also improve on the safety of the nurses and that of the patients receiving the care.
There is need hence to have legislators converge on the subject and passing the necessary amendments to the laws regulating health care and sailing the staffing regulations into operational levels. Health care facilities also must be sensitized, with practical data as above, to see the benefits that have been experienced in the hospitals where such measures have been implemented and in turn accept to have New Jersey residents as beneficiaries to the health care staffing regulations.
Reference s
API Helath Care, (2014). The Top 3 Benefits of Acuity-Based Staffing for Your Organization. Retrieved September 30, 2018 from http://apihealthcare.com/sites/default/files/API_Healthcare_Benefits_Acuity_Based_Staffing_WP.pdf
Department of Professional Employees, (2006). The Costs and Benefits of Safe Staffing Ratios. Retrieved September 30, 2018 from https://dpeaflcio.org/programs/factsheets/archived/fs_2006_staffratio.pdf
Reiter K.L. et.al., (2012). Minimum Nurse Staffing Legislation and the Financial Performance of California Hospitals. Retrieved September 30, 2018 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3337946/
Sime T. & Fentie W. (2016). Staffing: Practices and Challenges. Retrieved September 30, 2018 from http://www.ijsrp.org/research-paper-0416/ijsrp-p5239.pdf