To enact the Washington State Patient Safety Act. The bill is intended to protect patients, to support greater retention of registered nurses, to promote evidence-based nurse staffing, and to increase transparency of health care data and decision making. A 15-member advisory committee on nurse staffing would be created. The committee would be responsible for recommending patient assignment limits, recommending quality indicators, and making other recommendations regarding the development and implementation of hospital staffing plans. See companion SB 5696.   Official Text and Analysis.

To: (1) delete the establishment of an Advisory Committee on Nurse Staffing, and requires the Central Nursing Resource Center, by February 1, 2008, to make recommendations on patient assignment limits, to be reviewed, and final recommendations adopted, by the DOH by March 15, 2008; (2) delete the requirement for staffing plans to meet a minimum staffing standard; (3) require a staffing plan to include an explanation if the plan adopts lower staffing levels than the DOH recommendations; (4) require an annual updating of staffing plans; (5) delete a requirement to update each shift's plan every eight hours; (6) add a requirement for hospitals to have a process for reporting staffing concerns and for the DOH to review those reports along with the staffing plan every 18 months in conjunction with hospital licensing surveys; (7) require the DOH, in collaboration with the WSQF, to develop standards for comparing hospital staffing plans and post ratings and other information about staffing on the WSQF's website; (8) add that hospitals must consider staffing issues as a factor when reporting adverse health events and incidents; and (9) apply these requirements to private psychiatric hospitals, as well as acute care hospitals and state hospitals.

To require the recommendations related to hospital staffing plans to be developed by June 1, 2008, instead of February 1, 2008, and also delays the timelines for publishing final recommendations and implementing staffing plans for four months. Requires the recommendations to be developed by a task force convened by the Central Nursing Resource Center (CNRC), and requires the task force to include members from organizations representing hospitals, including rural hospitals. Changes the patient assignment recommendation to "standards" rather than "limits." Adds a specific requirement for the recommendations to be evidence-based. Requires the CNRC to forward the recommendations to the Department of Health, and the task force to review and update the recommendations biennially. Clarifies that the final recommendations are to be published, but not adopted as rules, by the Department of Health. Deletes the civil penalties for violations of the staffing plan requirements and, instead, requires the DOH to investigate complaints by hospital staff and attempt to resolve the violation. If not resolved, the DOH must make findings and post them along with ratings of staffing plans. The DOH must maintain a toll-free phone number for patients to report violations, and such reports must be disclosed to the hospital and its staffing committee.