AUGUSTA – A controversial bill aimed at decreasing the patient load for nurses in hospitals may be placed on hold until next year.

Members of Maine State Nurses Association who support the bill and hospital administrators who oppose it told Health and Human Services Committee Co-chairman Rep. Thomas Kane that they might be willing to shelve the matter while they work together to find a solution, the Saco Democrat said Monday.

Although the bill, scheduled for a committee work session Friday, may still get to the floor this year, Kane proposed the delay to clarify a messy situation.

“For the committee to try to make a good judgment between two equally competent professional opinions may not be the best policy,” Kane said. “My hope is they can find as much common ground as possible.”

There was little common ground in testimony Monday.

Sen. Ann Rand, D-Portland, a co-sponsor of the bill and a nurse, said some Maine hospitals choose staffing levels by the number of beds in a ward rather than the conditions of the patients.

And while hospitals have stepped up their recruiting efforts, not enough is being done to retain experienced nurses or create better conditions for new nurses, she said.

“We can offer incentives for new nurses to take the jobs, but if those nurses decide they do not want to make careers of those jobs because there are not reasonable work schedules, nor well-designed jobs, we haven’t solved the problem,” she said.

New nurses will “be working many of their days under stressful or understaffed conditions, while continually trying to provide optimal care for their patients,” she said. “In addition they receive less compensation, less vacation and less retirement benefits than their teacher, accountant, engineering, chemistry and computer industry classmates.”

“We don’t believe this bill is necessary,” said Mary-Anne Ponti, vice president of nursing and patient care at Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport. She said passing the bill would only divert attention from other important issues.

Staffing levels in Maine are fine, she said, pointing to a finding by the Health Care Finance Administration, the federal organization that oversees Medicaid, that Maine was third best in the nation in terms of medical outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries in 2000.

Lisa Harvey-McPherson, chairman of the legislative committee of the Organization of Maine Nurse Executives and director of continuing care for Eastern Maine Healthcare in Bangor, said additional regulations are unnecessary because ample controls already exist.

“Nurses have never needed state regulation to tell us how many patients we should care for,” said Jennifer St. Peter, a clinical supervisor at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. “I am proud of the nurses who work for me who most willingly bend to the situations at hand.”

St. Peter said in addition to being a nurse for 22 years before being promoted to management last June, she has seen the system work as a family member. When her husband was transported to the hospital, the nurses were supportive and adjusted their schedules to help, she said.

“It is my opinion this bill will make staffing worse,” she said.

Justin Smith, a member of the public, said he had some comments based on his wife’s treatment after a car accident last year near Waterville. She had multiple broken bones and was in serious condition and treated at a couple of facilities.

He said the nurses, who were the primary information providers, were wonderful. But they had to spend more time on insurance forms. Nurses have “a heavy load of paperwork not related to good medical care,” he said.

Linda Crowell, a nurse at Mount Desert Island Hospital, said many nurses left her hospital over the years for a variety of reasons. Shortages that make it more difficult to provide care “mean feeling guilty every time you walk through the hospital doors,” she said. But, she added, she hoped the passage of this bill would bring back the nurses who have left to improve the situation.

Co-sponsor Rand said she is happy that a dialogue is promised between nurses and hospital administrators. “The point is that there is a problem,” she said. “It is chiefly manifested in the shortage of persons trained in the nursing profession who are willing to continue working in that profession.”