ALBANY, NY | The Fiscal Policy Institute today released a report on the staffing crisis in Upstate New York’s hospitals by FPI Economist Dr. Emily Eisner.

The report finds that 90 percent of Upstate hospital shifts are current understaffed, and that an additional 5,000 Registered Nurses and 20,000 ancillary staff are needed to achieve safe staffing levels. As the report shows, chronic understaffing leads to a 14 percent rise in mortality risk for patients on the worst 10 percent of hospital units—about 280 additional patients death for every 100,000 hospitalizations.

The report also finds that RNs could be recruited from the large pool of trained RNs who do not currently work as nurses—70,000 RNs in New York, over 35 percent of all trained RNs.

“The findings of this report underscore the urgent need to address chronic hospital understaffing in Upstate hospitals. Despite the 2021 Clinical Staffing Committee Law, which went into effect in 2022, nearly 90 percent of shifts are understaffed, endangering patients and contributing to an alarming increase in patient mortality rates,” said Dr. Eisner.

“Nurses report that they cannot perform their jobs because they are spread too thin. New York has enough trained RNs available to end this shortage — now, the State must improve job conditions so these nurses and ancillary staff can return to their jobs and perform them successfully.”