Senate Tax Committee Chairwoman Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, is chief sponsor of a bill to add Minnesota to a national nursing licensure compact. (Jerry Holt, Star Tribune file/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Minnesota Republicans in the Legislature are pushing a proposal this year to make it easier for nurses to cross state lines to work, an action they say could immediately help address workforce shortages in health care.

The proposal, which cleared a top Senate health care committee Monday, would add Minnesota to the list of 39 states in the Interstate Nurse Licensure Compact, which allows nurses to obtain one license that is valid in all participating states.

"Most other states have already adopted this, and it's time that Minnesota does also," said Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, the chief sponsor of the proposal.

"We all read during the height of the pandemic about hospitals getting overwhelmed. We still are reading about hospitals not able to get the nursing staff that we need."

Democrats in control of the House have pushed back on the measure. So has the state's largest union representing nurses, which argues the proposal would open the door to replacing full-time nurses with temporary staff "so hospital CEOs can increase their bottom lines."

"This bill is a thinly veiled attack on the bargaining power of Minnesota nurses who have worked so hard and sacrificed so much through the pandemic," said Sam Fettig, a spokesman for the Minnesota Nurses Association.

It's one of dozens of bills lawmakers have proposed this year to address historic workforce shortages, which have hit every industry but are particularly acute in health care. The national compact was established for more than 18 years ago, and Republicans in Minnesota have pushed to add the state for the past decade.

Supporters of the proposal, which include the Mayo Clinic, say the licensing requirements for states in the compact are the same as in Minnesota, and applicants must pass a federal criminal background check.

They add that joining the compact would expand telehealth and allow nurses to move freely and quickly across the country, including in emergency situations, while eliminating fees and additional requirements needed for Minnesota nurses to practice in other states.

"That process is costly, inefficient, very time-intensive and … frankly constipating," said Connie White Delaney, a professor and dean of the University of Minnesota's School of Nursing, who supports the change. "We're literally being forced to live under a 100-year-old, archaic, nonresponsive, non-nimble system."

Democrats in the House and Senate have rolled out their own proposal, which they say will help tackle the long-term staffing retention crisis by putting funding into mental health resources and loan forgiveness for nurses.

The proposal also would limit how many patients one nurse can cover and establish committees made up of management and nurses at each hospital to discuss staffing levels.

"COVID has done nothing but illuminate the warnings that they have sent to us for many, many years about inadequate staffing in our hospitals meaning our patients are not safe," said DFL Sen. Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul.

Murphy, who is a nurse, criticized the GOP proposal to join the compact as a "quick fix" that doesn't help other nurses in the state.

"Remember that the job we have in front of us is to retain the nurses we have here in Minnesota," she said.