We’re fighting for safe staffing for hospitals and nursing homes.

Everyone in Pennsylvania relies on and trusts our healthcare workers to keep us safe when we’re sick, but a staffing crisis in hospitals and nursing homes, created by profit-driven staffing cuts, is burning out caregivers and endangering community members. This crisis started long before the pandemic, but COVID has pushed many nurses and healthcare workers past the breaking point.

Ensuring safe staffing standards for hospitals and nursing homes will help solve the crisis and protect patients. When caregivers have too many patients, people wait longer for the care they need, the chance of errors goes up, and risk of infection, patients falling, heart attack, pneumonia, and death increases dramatically. It also increases injuries, burnout, and turnover among caregivers.

Below are ways to take action in the fight for safe staffing for hospitals and nursing homes

Community Support—Support Our Fight for Safe Staffing

Healthcare workers are fighting for safe staffing, and we need the public’s support.

Sign to support our fight to protect patients and end the staffing srisis in PA hospitals & nursing homes

Add your name

Hospital Workers—Take Action for Safe Staffing for Hospitals

For hospitals—Building to a majority of support for the Patient Safety Act in the legislature for the first time ever.

The Patient Safety Act (House Bill 106 & Senate Bill 240) will establish safe staffing standards in every hospital, and provide transparency and accountability to patients and their families. Not only is it better for patients, it’s better for hospitals too: the cost-savings of improved care more than cover the costs of hiring additional staff.

Today, a bi-partisan majority of the PA House agrees with us. 104 out of 200 sitting Represnetatives have signed on to support this critical law, and we believe it’s possible to reach a majority of support for the first time ever in this legislative session.

However, one person is standing between all of us and safer patient care: House Health Committee Chairwoman Rep. Kathy Rapp must move the bill out of committee immediately.

Make the call to tell House Health Committee Chair Rep. Kathy Rapp to pass the Patient Safety Act.

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Nursing Home Workers—Take Action for Safe Staffing for Nursing Homes

For nursing homes—For the first time, we have a clear path to safe staffing in Pennsylvania nursing homes—but we haven’t won yet.

Our nursing homes are in crisis, due in part to outdated regulations that haven’t been touched in 25 years—until now. After years of nursing home workers sounding the alarm on dangerous staffing and workplace conditions, Governor Wolf has finally announced long-overdue reform to these regulations that will save lives, give voice to caregivers, and move us closer to the transformation that’s needed to ensure safe, high-quality care in every Pennsylvania nursing home.

But our work isn’t done. We need to keep up the pressure throughout the regulatory review process to finalize and implement 4.1, and we need the legislature to pass permanent rate increases to invest in frontline bedside care & caregivers.

Sign up to visit your legislators to tell them to take action to fund safe staffing for nursing homes and hold nursing homes accountable to their funding going to the bedside.