SECTION 1. Chapter 111 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2010 Official Edition, is hereby amended by inserting after section 228 the following section:-

Section 229. (a) For the purposes of this section, the the following words shall have the following meanings:

“Department”, the department of public health.

“Hospital”, a hospital licensed under section 51 of chapter 111, the teaching hospital of the University of Massachusetts medical school, a private licensed hospital; provided, however, that “hospital” shall not include a hospital or unit classified as either an inpatient rehabilitation facility, an inpatient psychiatric facility, an inpatient substance abuse facility, or a long term care hospital by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as a state-owned and state-operated general acute care hospital, or an acute care unit within a state-operated facility.

“Staffing plan”, a written report that indicates the team of patient care professionals involved in the direct care of patients for the following units in each hospital: medical, surgical, critical care, skilled nursing care, step down or intermediate care, emergency departments, and such other units as determined by the Department. 

(b) A hospital shall report to the department on an annual basis its staffing plan for the preceding hospital fiscal year.  The staffing plan shall include, but not be limited to, the following:

consideration and inclusion of patient care professionals who have productive hours with direct patient care responsibilities greater than 50% of their shift who are counted in the staffing matrix and replaced if they call in sick; provided however that such staffing plan shall exclude monitor technicians, student nurses and sitters/patient observers; the patient centered nursing activities carried out by unit-based staff in the presence of the patient (e.g., medication administration, nursing treatments, nursing rounds, admission/transfer/discharge, patient teaching, patient communication) and nursing activities that occur away from the patient that are related (e.g., coordination of patient care, documentation, treatment planning); and in a general narrative form appended to the report, discuss the complexity of clinical judgment needed to design and implement a patient’s nursing care plan, the need for specialized equipment and technology, the skill mix of other patient care team members  providing or supporting direct patient care, and involvement in quality improvement activities, professional preparation and experience. 

The department shall post the reports in an electronic format, as determined by regulation promulgated by the department, published on the department website and available to the public.

The department shall further develop a process to collect, monitor and evaluate evidence-based nurse-sensitive clinical performance measures, from the nationally recognized measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum that measure how well hospitals prevent pressure ulcers, patient falls, and patient falls with injury.  The department shall require reporting of information based on existing state and federal data reporting requirements.  The department shall annually issue to the general public hospital-specific data and aggregated industry trends developed from these reports.

SECTION 2. Section 1 of this act shall take effect on October 1, 2014.