The Catskill Chronicle

NEW YORK STATE (June 18, 2013) – Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther recently announced Assembly passage of the Safe Patient Handling Act. The measure calls for health care facilities to develop a Safe Patient Handling policy – protecting patients, health care workers and, in the long term, reducing costs for health care facilities. 

The bill (A.2180-B), carried by Assemblywoman Gunther, creates a statewide Safe Patient Handling Task Force to develop recommendations for policies 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 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 and another decreased lost days due to injury by 95.8 percent.”  

Safe patient handling provides training and, in some cases, can 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.

While a safe patient handling program may require an initial capital investment, healthcare facilities were able to quickly recoup their costs 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.