BOSTON -- The House is about to debate a bill that would allow the Department of Public Health to regulate how many patients a hospital can assign to each nurse.

NewsCenter 5's Janet Wu reported Tuesday that many Bay State nurses were split on staffing levels.

"If you drop your child off at day care in the morning there is a limit to the number of children that can be cared by one caretaker, and that is for a well child," Cambridge Hospital nurse Donna Kelly-Williams said.

"It doesn't look at the team. It takes a team to care for patients. You need the right mixture of people," BayState Medical Center nurse Beth Zabriekski said. "On the unit I work on, we have to do hearing screens on newborn babies. Those can take up to an hour, to an hour and a half to do. It would take the RN away from the bedside of those patients if we were tied up doing that one task."

The Massachusetts Nurses Association, representing about one-quarter of all licensed nurses in the Bay State, accepted a compromise Tuesday from their formerly hard stand of four patients per nurse.

They are willing to give the state some flexibility in deciding how many nurses per unit, per shift, and per hospital must be on staff.

"For every patient above four on a medical/surgical floor that a nurse must take care of, the risk of harm or even death to a patient increases by 7 percent, which is abysmal," St. Vincent Hospital nurse Sandy Ellis said.

"If we are going to focus on the quality you receive, you have to bring in the other piece of the team, also, and measure the care in that way," BayState Medical Center CFO Chuck Shinaman said.

Hospital administrators are trying to convince legislators that their prerogatives as managers can't be usurped by politics.

While they're willing to let the Department of Public Health weigh in on the issues, they don't want any penalties for ignoring the agency, and they want to substitute practical nurses, physical therapists, social workers and unlicensed caregivers for some positions.

"The need to have some flexibility there, to be able to flex up or flex down depending on the education of the nurse, the acuity of the patient," Rep. Kay Khan said.

Debate is expected to continue Wednesday. The Massachusetts Nurses Association is not happy with the latest compromise, but said it can live with it.

Bottom line, they know they are running out of time since the Legislature must wrap up all controversial issues by July 31, and the state budget will take up most of Beacon Hill's time between now and then, but word is that the hospitals are confident they can kill the legislation in the Senate.