For Immediate Release
Jan. 28, 2025
Adrienne Enghouse
enghouse@yahoo.com
503-810-4489
SANTE FE, N.M.—United Health Professionals of New Mexico and District 1199NM strongly endorsed a safe patient staffing bill today that requires hospitals to establish committees to create nurse-to-patient staffing ratios to ensure improved medical outcomes and help reverse nurse burnout and dangerous turnover.
State Rep. Kathleen Cates’ New Mexico Patient Safety Act, also being sponsored by Sen. Leo Jaramillo, would require each hospital to establish a staffing committee of managers and direct-care nursing staff; and keep data on patient outcomes, internal and external complaints regarding staffing, and the number of mandatory overtime hours worked by nurses. Hospital nurse staffing budgets would be based on their nurse staffing plans.
“New Mexico hospitals can no longer shortchange and endanger patients and burn out nurses and other healthcare workers by trying to get away with chronic understaffing,” said Regina Hite McGinnis, a physical therapist at Sandoval Regional Medical Center and the president of United Health Professionals of New Mexico. “This bill has been needed for years and must be passed swiftly.”
“You can’t have safe patient care without safe staffing levels. Every patient deserves to know that there are enough nurses on each shift to ensure quality care,” said Yolanda Ulmer, CEO of District 1199NM.
Rep. Cates said: “New Mexicans should no longer accept risk from medical providers based on maximizing profits instead of following standard medical protocols.”
# # #