The majority of research indicates that providing enough nurses for patients in a hospital improves care. As a nurse, or a travel nurse, you probably already knew that. Nearly 30 states have either enacted staffing policy rules or plan to as a way to address declining nurse levels, but those in a position to enact these rules may want to tread lightly. With the state of California at the nation’s testing ground for staffing rules, researchers have concluded that these staffing mandates do lead hospitals to add nurses.

But at what price?

Hospitals with the greatest need for nurses ma not be able to get them, and adding nurses to hospitals that are in a position to attract and keep nurses to meet rations might be siphoning nurses and resources away from struggling hospitals.

Some hospitals in California have had a difficult time meeting staffing requirements. These have mostly been hospitals and other facilities that serve as a ’safety-net’ for poor and uninsured Californians. The logic behind mandatory minimums goes a little something like this: Additional nurses provide more, and therefore better, care.

This may work in general, but there are those who say that at some point, adding too many nurses yields diminishing returns for the hospital or facility. Of course, nobody really knows where that point is. One study has suggested that hospitals could spend over $48,000 per life saved to increase nurse staffing from 1:8 to 1:5.

Some hospital administrators are also claiming that poorer hospitals will have to skimp elsewhere in order to add nurses and avoid regulatory hot water. Cut to areas like infection control, record-keeping software and other areas. Is this trade off worth it for patients? or are facilities giving up more on the back-end by adding nurses to the front-end of patient care?