Years After the Passage of the 2021 Clinical Staffing Committee Law, Short Staffing Remains at Crisis Levels Across the State, Threatening Patient Care and Furthering the Workforce Shortage

NEW YORK – Today, healthcare workers across the State, including members of CWA District 1, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and United Food and Commercial Workers, submitted complaints detailing over 23,000 separate violations of hospitals’ clinical staffing plans to the New York State Department of Health (DOH) from hospitals across the State. This comes almost four years following the passage of the 2021 Clinical Staffing Committee Law. The significant number of complaints demonstrates the continuation and breadth of the statewide staffing crisis. Studies show that short staffing is a main driver of the healthcare workforce emergency. 

The clinical staffing plans dictate the number of patients that can be assigned to Registered Nurses (RNs) and ancillary staff for each unit and each shift. These plans were negotiated by the hospitals’ staffing committees, made up of frontline healthcare workers and management, which is required by the 2021 Clinical Staffing Committee law. The plans, which are essential to ensuring safe staffing levels and quality patient care across all New York hospitals, went into effect beginning in January 2023.

Violations reported to the DOH include:

• Out of the total number of complaints, approximately 10% occurred in Intensive Care Units, which care for the most critical and sickest patients. In one instance, RNs report being assigned 4 patients each, which threatened patient care, meant the Charge RN had to take assignment and prevented any staff from taking their meal or rest breaks. The ratio required by the law and necessary for adequate and safe care is 1:2 for critical and intensive care patients.

• On a “step down unit” which provides care for patients who need more monitoring and attention than a typical medical-surgical floor, the staffing plan indicated 1 RN for 3 patients. However, multiple shifts had 6 patients for each RN, more than double the safe assignment. 

• On those same units, nursing assistants who each can be assigned up to 6 patients had 14 patients each, more than double, meaning delays in essential patient care tasks like changing, bathing and cleaning.

• One Emergency Room, with the capacity to care for only 60 patients, had 97 patients. In order to meet the staffing plan, 25 RNs should have been present on the unit, but there were only 8, meaning an additional 17 RNs were needed for this number of patients. There were only 2 aides in the department, meaning they were responsible for 48 patients each.  

For years, state leaders and hospital management have raised the alarm on the shortage of frontline healthcare workers, however they have neglected to do enough to address the workforces’ main concerns including frequent inadequate staffing. Frontline healthcare workers are being required to care for too many patients at once at the expense of patient safety and worker morale. Research shows that understaffing is a main driver of turnover of healthcare staff as well as heavily linked to poor patient outcomes.

 

QUOTES

Dennis Trainor, Vice President of CWA District 1, said, “New York’s healthcare workers have been sounding the alarm on short staffing for years, yet their concerns continue to be ignored. The violations submitted today make it clear: hospitals are failing to meet the staffing levels they committed to, and the Department of Health must act now. Our frontline workers are being pushed to their limits, and patient care is suffering as a result. Without immediate enforcement of the Clinical Staffing Committee law, we risk driving even more healthcare professionals away from the bedside. CWA members are ready to fight for real accountability, and we won’t stop until our hospitals are fully and safely staffed.”

“We will only fix the workforce shortage if we fix the staffing crisis. Almost four years after we passed the 2021 Clinical Staffing Committee Law, we continue to see an alarming number of staffing violations across New York State hospitals,” said CWA District 1 Area Director, Debora Hayes. “Our members have tirelessly committed to their staffing committees in order to improve conditions in the workplace, both for the safety of healthcare workers and for the patients who rely on their care, on top of their everyday jobs. Current staffing levels put everyone at risk, and frontline healthcare workers deserve robust enforcement of this law from the Department of Health.”

"As a Registered Nurse and a representative of healthcare workers across this state, I am proud to stand with those on the frontlines of the statewide staffing crisis," said Nadine Williamson, Executive Vice President, RN Division, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. "The sheer volume of complaints highlights the widespread and pervasive nature of the problem and demands urgent action from the state to enforce the law, protect patients, and improve working conditions for healthcare workers."

“Our dedicated members have put in tremendous effort to develop clinical staffing plans that prioritize the safety of both patients and healthcare workers. However, they are still facing extreme challenges in light of the ongoing staffing crisis in our hospitals,” stated Cori Gambini, President of CWA Local 1168. “The dangers of understaffing cannot be ignored. With such working conditions, we risk not only patient outcomes but also the retention of our valuable healthcare workers. We are calling on the Department of Health to conduct a thorough investigation into these complaints and to fully enforce the Clinical Staffing Committee Law.”

“The number of complaints submitted today underscores what I hear from our members every day - the state of staffing at hospitals throughout the State is unsustainable and unsafe. Without enforcement from the Department of Health, healthcare workers will not be able to provide the quality of care they are capable of and that patients deserve,” said Brian Magner, President of CWA Local 1133. “Our members are committed to documenting complaints until the safe staffing levels mutually agreed upon by employers and workers are met.”

“Today, we are submitting new staffing complaints to New York State. This round of complaints to DOH are targeted to areas of concern that are ongoing within our hospitals. We are not submitting all of the outstanding complaints, which are numerous. Again, we want to target areas of the utmost concern that have been ongoing areas of complaints submitted by staff,” said Jim Scordato, 1199SEIU Vice-President for WNY Hospitals.

“Healthcare workers have been sounding the alarm about the staffing crisis in our hospitals for years. Without robust enforcement of the Clinical Staffing Committee Law from the Department of Health, conditions will continue to worsen - risking patient outcomes and pushing healthcare workers to leave the bedside. Our members will continue to speak up about these issues until staffing levels improve.” said Mark A. Manna, Western Area Director of UFCW District Union Local One.