Healthcare regulators in the country’s fourth most populous state are getting barraged with complaints about hospital understaffing.
New York, which is also the state with the fourth most hospitals, some 185, received almost 8,000 new such complaints just last week.
That tally was juiced by a campaign led by a healthcare union, and it added to the burden of more than 650 complaints already awaiting attention.
The reporting is from the Rochester-based Democrat & Chronicle.
The newspaper notes that, in the face of the onslaught, regulators have only handed down 11 citations to hospitals that are operating in violation of a 2021 law mandating certain staffing levels.
Nine other institutions are under review, but no nursing homes have been fined under the same law. The latter have so far skated due to “repeated delays amid legal challenges and industry opposition.”
The article notes that, earlier this year, labor arbitrators awarded nurses at Mount Sinai sites nearly $400,000 for working in understaffed units.
Among the complaints filed last week during the union push, the newspaper reports, were several troubling violations, including:
- Nurses working under 1:3 nurse-to-patient ratios in ICU departments, when the ratio required by the law is 1:2 for critical and intensive care patients.
- Entire patient care units being left without any care attendants because they were floated to other shortages in the hospital, leaving patients without being changed, cleaned or provided their medication.
- Management consistently mandated staff to work beyond their scheduled hours on a regular basis.
Some hospitals and nursing homes have “asserted a mix of pandemic burnout, national competition for health workers and insufficient government reimbursement for healthcare, in particular Medicaid, makes it difficult to meet staffing minimums,” Democrat & Chronicle health reporter David Robinson writes.
Robinson points out that lawmakers this year approved a 7.5% increase in Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospitals. “Healthcare unions and hospital trade groups are expected to seek additional rate increases in the coming year’s budget to further close the gap between reimbursements and the cost to provide care,” he notes.
The full article is posted here.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.