By: Fern Sidman
In light of the continuing controversy surrounding the deaths of over 10,000 nursing home patients in New York State during the early months of the coronavirus, legislators are now pushing forth a bill that would require nursing homes and hospitals to follow specific ratios of nurses to patients. Increasing the number of staff members at all nursing care and skilled care facilities in the state has been strongly advocated by health care unions.
This repeated call for a substantial increase in staffing at nursing homes was reiterated in a report released last week by New York State Attorney General Letitia James. Her report, entitled, “Nursing Homes’ Response to COVID-19” was released on January 28th.
The report, which is predicated on ongoing investigations into the matter since March of 2020, concluded that “a larger number of nursing home residents died from COVID-19 than the New York State Department of Health’s (DOH) published nursing home data reflected and may have been undercounted by as much as 50 percent.”
The report added that “the investigations also revealed that nursing homes’ lack of compliance with infection control protocols put residents at increased risk of harm, and facilities that had lower pre-pandemic staffing ratings had higher COVID-19 fatality rates.”
The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is the only law enforcement agency in the state specifically mandated to investigate and prosecute abuse and neglect of residents in nursing homes. In early March, OAG received and began to investigate allegations and indications of COVID-19-related neglect of residents in nursing homes.
“As the pandemic and our investigations continue, it is imperative that we understand why the residents of nursing homes in New York unnecessarily suffered at such an alarming rate,” said Attorney General James. “While we cannot bring back the individuals we lost to this crisis, this report seeks to offer transparency that the public deserves and to spur increased action to protect our most vulnerable residents. Nursing homes residents and workers deserve to live and work in safe environments, and I will continue to work hard to safeguard this basic right during this precarious time.”
The WSJ reported that the bill which was approved on Tuesday by the state Assembly’s health committee said it would “require hospitals to develop staffing plans that met minimum ratios between nurses and patients in various kinds of settings, like intensive care or surgical units. Nursing homes would need to submit plans that show residents are receiving more than four hours of staff care a day.”
New York law requires a nursing home provide “sufficient nursing staff and related services to attain or maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychosocial well-being,” as was reported by the WSJ.
Currently, state and federal laws mandate that nursing homes have at least one registered nurse or licensed practical nurse on call 24 hours a day, plus one RN for eight hours and an RN serving as director of nursing, as was reported by the WSJ.
According to a survey conducted by Charlene Harrington, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, more than half of U.S. states set minimum hours of contact between nursing-home staff and residents or mandate a minimum number of caregivers in proportion to residents.
Because of concerns about increased costs, associations representing hospitals and nursing homes oppose the New York legislation, as was reported by the WSJ. They assert that recruiting the required amount of staff to meet the levels that the bill calls for would be difficult.
A source close to the nursing home industry, who spoke to the Jewish Voice on the condition of anonymity said, “It’s pretty straight forward as it pertains to nursing home policy. Their objective is to provide the least service possible for the most money possible. The astronomical costs of residing in nursing homes and what it means to patients and their families are of no concern to the owners of these facilities. Nursing homes are a gold mine for owners and they make it their business to implement cost cutting policies at every turn, even if that means that patients get very little or no care at all.”
Those advocating for the bill such as nurses unions say that the measure would “reduce fatigue and burnout among health-care workers and improve patient outcomes,” according to the WSJ report. They said the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic showed the consequences of inadequate staffing, the report continued.
Speaking to the WSJ, Pat Kane, executive director of the New York State Nurses Association union said , “What we want to do is provide care that is consistent with our professional standard.”
The WSJ reported that Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, a Democrat from Sullivan County and a registered nurse, said the increased cost of hiring staff would be eventually offset by lower costs from better patient outcomes and lower turnover among nurses.
Brian Conway, a spokesman for the Greater New York Hospital Association told the WSJ that, “We have the deepest respect and admiration for our RNs, but forced nurse staffing ratios would undermine real-time patient care decisions, deny hospitals the flexibility they need to respond to emergencies such as Covid-19, and disrupt team-based care by crowding out other essential members of the health-care team.”
