Maryland's Safe Staffing Act of 2026 took effect October 1, putting every licensed hospital in the state except state hospitals on a timeline to create clinical staffing committees and adopt written staffing plans. For patients in Baltimore and across Maryland, the first deadline does not arrive until July 2027.
The key detail is what the law leaves out. The enacted text of Chapter 235 does not set a limit on how many patients a nurse may care for, and it never uses the word ratio. Instead, staffing plans must comply with the staffing standards of each hospital's accrediting body and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and hospitals build their own unit-by-unit plans.
