Hospital Staffing Bill Moves Ahead In WA Legislature

OLYMPIA — A bill setting minimum staffing requirements at hospitals is making its way through the Washington State Legislature. But while it garnered the approval of a majority of the Washington House of Representatives this week, health care employee unions and the state's hospital association disagree about whether or not its passage is a good thing.

The bills in question, House Bill 1868, aims to address the healthcare system's staffing needs by making the job more enticing, banning required overtime, guaranteeing meal and rest breaks, and mandating minimum staffing standards. However, that last part, the minimum staffing requirements, has caused some friction between the Washington State Hospital Association (WSHA), legislators, and three unions representing tens of thousands of rank-and-file healthcare workers.

HB 1868 passed the House of Representatives on a 55-43 vote Monday, just in time to head to the state Senate. In response, the WSHA has released a statement calling on the Senate to reject the bill.

“The pandemic has been incredibly difficult for everyone working in health care,” said Darcy Jaffe, RN, Senior Vice President of Safety and Quality at the Washington State Hospital Association. “While we share lawmakers’ desire to support health care workers, this legislation would not solve any of the root causes of the strain on our workforce and would make permanent many of the worst parts of pandemic health care, including long delays in care.”

As an example, under HB 1868, ICU units would be required to staff at least one RN for every two patients. In the past, WSHA claimed Washington already has a shortage of about 6,000 registered nurses, and their estimates show the bill would require hospitals to hire at least 15,000 more to meet the minimum staffing requirements— a combined cost of over a billion dollars, the association said.

Many nurses, however, believe that the bill will work, improving working conditions and enticing workers who have burned out or moved on. Earlier this month Patch spoke to representatives from the WA Safe + Healthy campaign, a coalition of the Washington State Nurses Association, UFCW 21 and SEIU Healthcare 1199NW which represents a combined 71,000 workers across Washington state. WA Safe + Healthy campaign leaders say they strongly support the proposed legislation, and believe that minimum staffing requirements will solve current staffing shortages.

"There are a lot of nurses out there. There isn't a shortage of health care workers, there is a shortage of workers that want to work under these awful conditions," said Jane Hopkins, a registered nurse and the executive vice president of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. "I don't understand why hospitals would say having more healthcare workers would lead to less care, it doesn't make sense."

"House Bill 1868 does nothing to increase the number of nurses available in Washington state," WSHA counters."The union proponents of the bill claim that there is not a nursing shortage, only people unwilling to work in hospitals. This is not true. While pandemic burnout is real across health care, there are many other reasons people have left hospital employment, including the current unreliability of childcare and school days and people retiring who initially delayed their retirement at the beginning of the pandemic."

Previously, Hopkins dismissed WSHA's warnings as "scare tactics", employed to avoid improving working conditions.

"We know that this law is going to stop people leaving, and those who have left are going to want to come back," Hopkins said.

For now, however, the bill still has some more hurdles to clear before it becomes law. Wednesday it had its first reading in the Senate, and has since been referred to the committee of Labor, Commerce & Tribal Affairs.