Absolute minimum. California announces its decision on nurse-staffing ratios, and other states watch and wait for the ripples to come their way.

After two years of wrangling, California hospitals learned how many patients the state government believes one nurse should care for safely. The announcement last week could well reverberate nationally. The ratio of one nurse to six patients in medical-surgical units is twice the number of patients supported by the state's nurse association and four fewer than that supported by the California Healthcare Association.