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What does the 2021 clinical staffing law do?

Each hospital must establish and maintain a clinical staffing committee made up of 50% workers and 50% management.

The clinical staffing committee will be responsible for creating staffing plans for the hospital.

Plans will be for each care unit and shift, based on the needs of patients and staff.

Plans must be developed based on:

Coverage to ensure staff can take appropriate breaks and leaves of absences
Plans for emergencies that may lead to short staffing

Plans must be adopted by the committee every July 1st.

The Department of Health must post the staffing plan on the DOH website as part of each hospital’s profile within 30 days (ie, by July 31).

Plans must be implemented by January 1st.

Once a staffing plan is adopted it becomes State law, and hospitals must comply with the plan.

If there are violations of the staffing plane, individual staff members and unions can file a complaint to the committee. The DOH will investigate any complaints unresolved by the committee.

This legislation isn’t the final, be-all-and-end-all of Safe Staffing legislation that we’ve been fighting for, but it’s a huge step forward and is intended to give workers the power to set staffing standards in each of our hospitals.

It's on us to implement this law and hold hospitals accountable to following through. The hospitals will not do it for us.