Healthcare Union Statement on Safe Staffing Committee Passage
SEATTLE – The WA Safe + Healthy Coalition (SEIU Healthcare 1199NW, UFCW 3000, and the Washington State Nurses Association) are pleased that SB 5236 has cleared the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
Under the current language, hospitals will still have to follow staffing plans, but staff-to-patient staffing standards will be set by nurse staffing committees. These staffing committees already exist within hospitals, but healthcare workers have long voiced concerns that agreed-upon staffing plans are often ignored or vetoed by hospital executives. New standards will allow the Department of Labor and Industries to step in to issue corrective action plans – in the form of staffing standards – to hospitals that are noncompliant with these plans.
“We’ve said all along that in order for any staffing plans to be effective, they must be enforceable, otherwise hospital executives will continue burning out their workforce through unsustainable short-staffing,” said Faye Guenther, president of UFCW 3000. “This amended bill certainly isn’t everything caregivers need, but the inclusion of real penalties and oversight for hospitals that refuse to follow staffing plans is an important first step toward improving safety for healthcare workers and patients.”
“Healthcare workers have been clear – we’re in a staffing crisis because of massive burnout from unmanageable working conditions caused by years of short-staffing in order to maximize hospitals’ profits,” said Jane Hopkins, president of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. “Throughout this session, hospital executives have been fighting for the status quo to protect their ability to short staff. We’re glad a majority of lawmakers realize the urgency of this crisis and are listening to healthcare workers.”
“Recent polling showed that half of the state’s healthcare workforce say they’re likely to leave health care within the next few years,” said David Keepnews, executive director of the Washington State Nurses Association. “The only way to avert that total collapse of our state’s health care system is to pass an enforceable mechanism to ensure hospital executives follow safe staffing. We’re glad the public and our lawmakers are taking this crisis seriously and are backing enforceable staffing standards.”
The statewide hospital staffing crisis isn’t just a crisis for workers, it’s also a patient safety crisis. In the same recent poll, 48 percent of healthcare workers said in the last year their hospitals have experienced a patient safety event leading to harm or death which they believed was due to short-staffing.
The WA Safe + Healthy coalition will continue working with lawmakers to ensure a strong, enforceable bill makes it through the Legislature this session, and thanks prime sponsor Sen. June Robinson for listening to healthcare workers in championing this bill.
