Testimony: Hearing on Senate bill No. 304 titled, “Patient Protection and Safe Staffing Act”
New Jersey Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Services Committee Hearing
Hearing on Senate bill No. 304 titled, “Patient Protection and Safe Staffing Act”
Thursday, January 04, 2024
Committee Room 6, First Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ
Written Testimony of Maria Refinski, Former President of Communications Workers of America (CWA), Local 1091, and Co-Chair of New Jersey Nurses Union (NJNU)
Chairman Vitale, Vice-Chairman Madden, and all other distinguished committee members thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony for the record on the important and long-standing topic of hospital understaffing.
My name is Maria Refinski and I am a registered nurse, the former President of the Communications Workers of America Local 1091, and currently serve as the Co-Chair of the New Jersey Nurses Union. CWA District 1 represents approximately 20,000 public and private nurses and frontline healthcare workers in New York and New Jersey. For the last 45 years, my entire career, from the picket line to the bargaining table to the halls of our State Capital, our members and I have been relentlessly fighting for safe staffing because we know that safe staffing saves lives.
Healthcare workers serve our communities around the clock, many times putting their health and their families health at risk. Healthcare workers play a crucial and invaluable role in society, contributing significantly to the well-being and overall health of individuals and communities. Our members provide patient care, aid in emergency response, supply education and advocacy efforts, provide compassion and empathy, and contribute to community building.
This bill before the committee today represents a pivotal moment for safe staffing in New Jersey. Our frontline staff have made selfless sacrifices during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is now far overdue the state addresses the issue of safe staffing – protecting patients and our healthcare workers alike. The devastating consequences of understaffing, exacerbated by COVID-19, can be seen in the mortality rates. There are significant disparities in mortality rates between hospitals that are well-resourced and other hospitals that are not. According to data collected and analyzed by the New York Times. Patients at hospitals with lower staffing rates and worse equipment were three times more likely to die than patients in better-staffed and resourced medical centers. Short-staffing should not be the standard by which our hospitals and facilities operate.
While the pandemic stretched our hospital system to a point we were not prepared for, many of the issues are long-standing issues that were exacerbated by COVID-19. Chronic underfunding of our healthcare systems has incentivized keeping the healthcare workforce as lean as possible, at the expense of workers and patients. To protect our healthcare workers, and our hospitals and ensure the best quality of care for all patients, we need safe staffing measures in our healthcare system.
While this bill symbolizes a huge step in the right direction, legislation around safe staffing must go further to protect the safety of our patients and healthcare workers. The enforcement mechanisms within this bill fall short of what is needed to achieve safe staffing. We need real binding ratios for hospitals and facilities and well-funded, strict enforcement by the Department of Health. Additionally, we need real worker input throughout the entirety of the process. We look forward to working closely with legislators, our members, and all those affected by short-staffing to make sure we get this legislation right.
I thank the Chairman and the Committee for allowing me to share my experiences on this issue.