| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 28, 2001 |
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Food and Commerical Workers Join Coalition to Address Nursing Home Staffing Shortages The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) joined other unions, consumer advocates, health care professionals and advocates for the elderly to forge a plan to solve the nation's critical staffing crisis in nursing homes. "Our nation's nursing homes are falling woefully short in providing adequate care to those in need, and we know the solution: more staff. The UFCW is proud to join this coalition that will help bring needed change to the nursing home industry," said UFCW International President Doug Dority. The UFCW endorses "The Nurse Staffing Crisis in Nursing Homes," a report sponsored by the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, which highlights significant factors to the critical shortage of qualified caregivers that, in turn, threaten the quality of care provided to our nation's elderly patients. Our nursing home care is in crisis. Patient care has sunk to dangerously low levels, leaving residents, our mothers, fathers and grandparents, at risk. Forty percent of all homes studied in a 1999 government investigation had patient care violations that were causing actual harm to residents. A July 2000 report to Congress by the Health Care Financing Administration revealed that many nursing homes have too few staff to ensure quality of care for residents. The UFCW represents more than 100,000 working men and women in the health care profession throughout North America. Through union contracts, the UFCW has improved safety in the workplace, restructured staffing and compensation levels, and just recently won an agreement with an employer that gives the caregivers the right to sue the employer if staffing levels get too low. For a copy of the joint statement by the Campaign for Quality Care, log on to http://www.nccnhr.org or call Janet Wells at (202) 332-2275. |
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