“Necessary to Provide Adequate Care for Patients” - WA House Committee Hears Testimony on Safe Staffing Bill
Almost 1,600 signed in to support improving safety for healthcare workers and patients
SEATTLE – Today state representatives in the House Labor and Workplace Standards Committee heard public testimony on House Bill 1868 – the bipartisan legislation to create safe staffing standards to protect healthcare workers and patients in Washington hospitals.
Almost 1,600 Washington healthcare workers, patients, and patient advocacy organizations signed in in support of the safe staffing bill – more than double the number of people who signed in in opposition.
“This bill is absolutely necessary if we plan to fix our healthcare system and provide adequate care to our patients,” said Maria Goodall, a vascular tech at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett and a member of UFCW 21. “This is not a new problem. Poor staffing is creating an unsafe practice for both staff and patients.”
The public hearing came a week after news that healthcare workers, represented by the three unions in the WA Safe + Healthy coalition, filed a record number of workplace safety complaints in 2021 – 8,649, more than triple the number filed in 2019. Healthcare workers forced to work mandatory overtime and care for dangerous patient loads is a concern for the safety of both staff and patients. The solution to improve safety, and address the hospital staffing crisis, is to pass safe staffing standards.
“We get into this work because we care about our patients, but we have to be able to care for them to do this job," said Alice Westphal, a CNA at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital and a member of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. "I am scared that the staffing crisis made worse by the COVID pandemic will become our new normal if we don’t get safe staffing standards. This cannot become the new normal.”
Staffing recruitment and retention problems predated COVID – a result of years of short-sighted budget decisions made by hospital executives to cut staff in order to maximize profits. The pandemic put these hospital-driven staffing issues in a pressure cooker, exacerbating the burnout and unsustainable patient loads healthcare workers were already facing. In recent polling, half of healthcare workers said they’re likely to quit within the next few years, the vast majority of whom said staffing issues were one of the biggest reasons.
“By systematically understaffing for years, Washington hospitals have set the stage for today’s staffing crisis,” said David Keepnews, executive director of the Washington State Nurses Association. “It would have been great if hospitals had shown that they could be trusted to staff safely without state intervention. But too many have shown that they cannot. Our current staffing laws were intended to provide for a collaborative approach. That hasn’t worked, because to work, both sides need to collaborate.”
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