Alaskan Legislation

Update on HB 50 & SB 12

Rep. Chris Tuck meets with Donna Phillips, RN and Mary Stackhouse, RN to discuss HB 50: An Act relating to limitations on mandatory overtime for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses in health care facilities.

January 24, 2010

As we begin the second part of the Twenty-sixth Alaska Legislature, I thought a brief update to the work on HB 50 & SB 12 would be in order. As nurses from across Alaska continue to speak out on patient safety, it is also important to include citizen groups as we make a final push to get these bills through the House & Senate finance committees and to a floor vote. This bill will ensure a level of safety for patients that we have not had in the State of Alaska in the past. Any one of us could need the services of hospital care at any time in our lives, so having a Registered Nurse not exhausted by long hours caring for you if and when that occurs has been shown to decrease the risk of an error in care.

Some of the common questions regarding this legislation are:

What Does CS for HB 50 (HSS) Do?

• Protects patients and nurses in a health care facility by limiting forced overtime unless needed for an emergency. A health care facility cannot force a nurse to work beyond certain prescribed periods of time, or to accept an assignment of overtime if, in the judgment of the nurse, the overtime would jeopardize patient safety or employee safety.
• Nurses cannot work more than 14 consecutive hours without 10 hours of rest. Nurses can volunteer to work additional shifts so long as the nurse does not work more than 14 consecutive hours without 10 hours of rest.
• Exceptions are allowed for unforeseen emergencies, school nurses, medivac flights, certain on-call situations, and to complete a medical or surgical procedure.

Senator Kevin Meyer, District O from Anchorage has a chance to talk with his constituent Mary Stackhouse, RN regarding the merits of SB 12, "An Act relating to limitations on mandatory overtime for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses in health care facilities; and providing for an effective date."

Why is CS for HB 50 (HSS) Needed?

• Purpose of bill is to promote patient safety and better working conditions for nurses.
• Nurses in Alaska are working an excessive amount of overtime without adequate rest. Nurses often work well beyond 12 consecutive hours, or come back within 2-4 hours of completing a 12-hour shift. Numerous studies document these situations are unsafe.
• a practice called "mandatory call," which the hospitals freely admit is used. In some cases, this is accomplished by pressure tactics designed to get nurses to "volunteer" for overtime hours. Suggestions of patient abandonment or assertions that nurses will be letting down co-workers are common.
• CS for HB 50 (HSS) will help with nurse recruitment and retention by prohibiting excessive amounts of overtime. The nurse workforce is aging – a ban on excessive overtime will keep these nurses working longer. Replacing a nurse routinely costs 100% to 300% of the nurse’s annual salary.
• A recent phone survey by AaNA documents that not all of the new UA nursing school graduates are being hired. The bill will not exacerbate the so-called shortage – there are additional graduates available to fill positions. It will provide hospitals with a valuable recruiting tool.
• Data suggests many hospitals are using overtime as a staffing tool. Hospitals are not hiring all available graduates and maintain vacancy rates of between 7% to 25%. It appears that many hospitals are trying to avoid hiring Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) employees.
• 83% of the Alaska RN workforce is over 40 years of age and 53% is over the age of 50. We need to conserve the workforce we have, and at the same time not scare away the 17% of the workforce that is under age 40. People with young families are not going to stay in the profession if they are constantly being forced to work.

Barb Lander, RN from Ketchikan has an opportunity to talk with Senator Stedman, District A from Sitka and Co-Chair of the Senate Finance committee at the AFL-CIO legislative reception in Juneau.

Stay tuned for updates to the progress of our efforts to promote patient safety in the State of Alaska.

Donna Phillips, BSN, RN

Downloads:

• HB 50
• SB 12

State Links

• State of Alaska

Aids for Action

• AK Legislative Handbook (handbook.pdf): A primer on the Legislative Branch of state government and its function.
• Look up Bills by the Bill Number or other bill information.
• Find Your Legislators: Determine your senator and representative are.
• Gavel to Gavel Alaska: Coverage of the Twenty-sixth Alaska Legislature, the Administration, and the Alaska Supreme Court.

Tips for Tracking Legislation

Go to www.legis.state.ak.us.

Double click on "Bill Action & Status Inquiry System" (BASIS) on the top right-hand side.

Enter the bill number. You must click on the gray area Display Bill Root—the enter key does not work.

Type in "SB ___" or "HB ___".

"Bill History & Action" is the next page to appear. This page shows you all the action that has taken place thus far on the bill.

Scroll down and you will see which committee it is in.

Scroll back up and double click on "Full Text"; you then arrive at "Bill Resolutions Versions Display."

If you have Adobe Acrobat, choose the PDF file. If you don't, choose from the left-hand side. You will notice several versions of the bill, but the bottom one is the most current version. This is the version that is in the respective committee. Let's say you want to compare the original bill and the most current version. Print out the version at the top of the page (original version) and the version at the bottom of the page (current version) and compare.

Let's say you want to look at the minutes of a particular meeting but you're not sure of the date of the meeting. The best way to do this is to go back to the "Bill History & Action" page.

Scroll down. The entries for a bill will show action by a committee, including the summary of the committee members' votes.

Go back to the "Bill History & Action" page. On the right-hand side you will see a list ("bill action, sponsor summary, subject summary, etc"). Scroll down to "Committee Minute Selection" (2nd from the bottom). You are now at "Committee Minute Query."

Click on "Senate Minutes" and enter the dates. (Tip: enter dates a little before and a little after the date that is shown on the "Bill History & Action" page.)

Enter the Bill Number — "SB ___" or "HB ___".

Click on "Display Minute Summary." You will now see all the minutes from the meetings. Click on whichever ones you want to read.

Let's say you don't know a bill number but know sponsored a bill. ON the BASIS home page you will see "Sponsor Summary" on the right-hand side. Click on it and go from there.

Let's say you don't know the bill number nor the sponsor. On the BASIS home page you will see "Subject Summary." Click on the subject and go from there.

This may seem like "too much to handle," but it really is simple once you get used to it. You will notice on the www.legis.state.ak.us page there is a great deal of information available to you.

Use it. Get familiar with it. The more you use it, the stronger we become and the more we will be heard.

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