Health reform--its potential impact on hospital nursing service.

The passage of major health reform measures in the United States focusing on universal access and cost containment could potentially have a significant impact on the delivery of nursing services in our nation's acute-care facilities. If President Clinton's global budgetary target concept, which is used in most western countries to constrain expenditures, is implemented in the United States, the experience of Canadian medium-size and teaching hospitals suggests that such a cost-containment approach would have a modest impact on nurse staffing patterns here.