Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried and Mental Health Committee Chair Aileen Gunther today announced the approval of the Safe Patient Handling Act. The measure calls for the Department of Health to develop a statewide Safe Patient Handling policy and for health care facilities to establish Safe Patient Handling committees, which would protect patients, health care workers and in the long term, reduce costs for health care facilities.

"For direct care employees, nurses and other health care professionals unsafe patient handling is one of the leading causes of workplace injury," said Silver. "The bill approved today is a commonsense measure that will reduce injuries for patients and staff, absenteeism and staff turnover and ultimately save money. Nursing and direct care professionals are the backbone of our healthcare industry and are overdue for the protections provided under this bill."

The bill (A.2180-B/Gunther) creates a Safe Patient Handling work group to develop a statewide policy outlining the requirement of safe patient handling programs to be implemented in hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities. Each facility would then create a Safe Patient Handling committee to develop and implement a facility-appropriate policy.

"This legislation will both improve patient outcomes and ensure the health and safety of workers," said Gottfried. "Manually moving patients is a complex and sometimes dangerous process. Requirements for safe patient handling standards will protect both healthcare workers and patients."

Silver, Gottfried and Gunther noted that safe patient handling policies would include staff training with regard to the recommended equipment or technology. Safe patient handling is, when appropriate, intended to replace manual lifting and moving tasks with assistive devices to properly and safely transfer patients without injury to the patient or the health care worker.

"This bill has been a long time coming," said Gunther. "Today, we've taken a huge step forward for the nursing profession and improved the delivery of healthcare in New York. Demonstration programs around the state have been extremely successful. In three years, one hospital saw a 76 percent reduction in worker’s compensation claims while another facility decreased worker absenteeism due to injury by 95.8 percent."

The benefits of implementing this policy outweigh any costs. Healthcare facilities that participated in the demonstration programs were able to quickly recoup their investments through decreased worker’s compensation claims, a reduction in staff time to review and act on injury reports and ultimately a decrease in worker’s compensation premiums.