Hospital understaffing complaints piling up in NY. Which hospitals violated staffing law?
Health care workers in New York are filing thousands of complaints about understaffing at hospitals, as pressure mounts on regulators to improve enforcement of minimum-staffing laws.
A health care union push last week submitted nearly 8,000 unresolved understaffing complaints, joining about 660 complaints that previously reached the state Department of Health, union and state officials said.
But despite all the complaints, regulators have imposed only 11 citations so far against hospitals for violating the 2021 staffing law, according to health officials, who said nine hospitals are under review for fines.
At the same time, enforcement of the 2021 staffing-minimum law for nursing homes has yet to result in any penalties, as that effort faced repeated delays amid legal challenges and industry opposition.
Which New York hospitals violated staffing law?
Responding to USA TODAY Network questions, health officials last week provided a list of hospitals that violated the staffing law. It included:
Five citations against Mount Sinai health system facilities, including its flagship hospital in Manhattan.
Two citations against NewYork-Presbyterian hospitals in Manhattan.
One citation each against Mohawk Valley Health System based in Oneida County and Erie County Medical Center.
Two citations against Montefiore Medical Center sites (Lucy and Moses division as well as Jack D. Weiler Hospital.)
State health officials on Friday declined to comment on the amount of fines that could be imposed.
Health care: NY enforcing staffing minimums at nursing homes. They won't say which ones aren't keeping up
But earlier this year, labor arbitrators awarded nurses at Mount Sinai sites nearly $400,000 for working in understaffed units related to the network’s violations of the state law, New York State Nurses Association reported.
Concerns about understaffing at hospitals spanned facilities across the state, according to complaint statistics released by health officials. For example, the 660 complaints included hospitals in the Finger Lakes and Hudson Valley, such as:
Eight complaints in Monroe County and one complaint in Ontario County
Dutchess, Orange and Westchester counties had 40, 28 and seven complaints, respectively.
State officials did not provide names of hospitals connected to the complaints.
New complaints of hospital understaffing in NY
Workers at hospitals in Buffalo, Elmira and New York City submitted 7,834 staffing law complaints last week, according to their Communications Workers of America union. They involved Kaleida Health facilities in Buffalo, as well as Arnot Ogden Medical Center in Elmira and NewYork-Presbyterian in New York City, the union said.
Alleged violations in the union complaints included:
Nurses working under 1:3 nurse-to-patient ratios in the 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 health care, in particular Medicaid, makes it difficult to meet staffing minimums.
Lawmakers this year approved a 7.5% increase in Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospitals. Health care 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.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: NY hospital understaffing complaints pile up. Will state take action?
