Today, Assemblymember Monica P. Wallace (D-Lancaster) announced that she stands with frontline healthcare workers in calling for New York State to pass the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act. Since years before the COVID-19 pandemic, Assemblymember Wallace has sponsored and advocated for legislation (A108) that would require all healthcare and nursing home facilities to maintain safe staffing levels, based on the ratio of direct care nursing staff to patients at the facility.

“I have long heard and amplified the calls from our healthcare heroes that safe staffing saves lives and helps ensure quality care for all,” said Assemblymember Wallace. “Tragically, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the need for safe staffing clearer than ever before.”

In a report released late last month, the New York State Attorney General found that nursing homes with lower staffing levels experienced more patient deaths from COVID-19. Assemblymember Wallace is calling on her colleagues to pass safe staffing legislation now, both in light of this report and other research showing that facilities with higher staffing levels have better patient health outcomes.

Assemblymember Wallace is co-sponsoring over a dozen other pieces of legislation to improve care and quality of life among nursing home residents, provide more rigorous oversight of these facilities, and ensure transparency of important nursing home information, including COVID-related data and staffing levels. This includes legislation that would require adult care facilities to develop and maintain infection control standards as part of their mandated quality assurance plans (S1784); direct the Department of Health to establish and implement an infection inspection checklist and require facilities to meet those standards (A1999); and to create a task force to examine the state of long-term care services in New York (A3922).

Assemblymember Wallace will also co-sponsor legislation (S3061) that would require reporting of infectious disease cases and deaths in nursing homes and adult care facilities, and legislation (A5685) that would require facilities to spend at least 70 percent of their operating revenue on resident care.

“The COVID crisis has revealed the many shortcomings of our existing nursing home industry. We must act now to enact safe staffing and other measures that we know will improve care and save lives,” said Assemblymember Wallace.