Nearly one year after a New York law required hospitals across the state to develop and implement staffing plans for smaller nurse-to-patient ratios, unions representing healthcare workers are calling for better enforcement of the “safe staffing” law.

Members of the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and Communications Workers of America (CWA) District 1, as well as other unions, urged state lawmakers hours ahead of a December 19 hearing to ensure the safe staffing law (aka the 2021 Clinical Staffing Committee law) is fully implemented and that policies to bolster the healthcare workforce—which is still plagued by shortages—take priority in upcoming budget negotiations. The law, which took effect January 1, 2023, requires hospitals to create committees of staff and management that establish the plans.

Rebecca Miller, CWA’s New York state deputy legislative and political director, said unsafe staffing levels are “the No. 1 issue harming patient care and pushing healthcare workers to voluntarily leave the bedside,” further exacerbating workforce shortages.

Keep reading here.—SY

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You don’t need 20/20 foresight to give your 2024 strategy an edge. Get a sneak peek into what the new year holds—and the future of healthcare on social media—in Hootsuite’s Social Trends 2024 report.

That’s right: Hootsuite’s annual social trends report is back, digging into everything you need to know about what’s brewing in the healthcare industry. It’s packed with guidance for the year ahead, including insights from marketers and industry inspo, like:

• healthcare’s strongest (and shakiest) social platforms
• AI’s future role in healthcare social teams
• navigating compliance and brand safety
• how entertainment helps boost the bottom line

Check out what 2024 has in store.

Despite all of the talk surrounding the need for more nursing and direct care workers in 2023, industry observers don’t expect healthcare workforce shortages to go away in 2024.

Parth Bhakta, founder and CEO of healthcare talent marketplace Vivian Health, told Healthcare Brew that although peak pandemic crisis pay rates have started to drop this year, the demand for hospital workers, particularly nurses, continued to outstrip demand—and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

“There’s a bit of a waiting game [with] a lot of these winter contract orders: People are trying to fill them at lower pay rates, but [workers] are still holding out and they’re not filling the jobs that they need,” Bhakta said. “I do believe that going into 2024 you’re going to see the continued demand on the healthcare workforce, where there’s just not enough healthcare workers and there’s a ton of open positions that remain to be filled.”

Keep reading here.—SY

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?

I use computers and genomic technologies to work toward developing safer and more effective treatments for human disease. We’re at the stage in human health where there’s an awesome convergence of a lot of biological data with artificial intelligence (AI). I’m part of a team trying to use that data to figure out how to not only create new medicines, but also deliver them to where they need to go in the body to be effective and safe, and manufacture them at an efficient scale that makes them materially more affordable to patients. For context, gene therapies can currently cost millions of dollars for a single treatment, so making progress on accessibility is important.

What’s the most compelling tech project you’ve worked on, and why?

I had the privilege of being part of developing the CAR-T cell therapies Abecma and Breyanzi to treat multiple myeloma and lymphoma, respectively. CAR T-cell therapy is a new approach to treat cancer by genetically modifying a patient’s own T-cells to target and kill cancer cells. These therapies are an exciting advancement in personalized cancer treatment, and we and others are using machine learning on clinical trial data to continually make these therapies even more effective.

Keep reading at Tech Brew.—AS

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Fewer than two in five Republicans have “little or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests.” (the New York Times)

Quote: “Guidelines that are incomplete, weak, and without scientific basis will greatly undermine CDC’s credibility.”—David Michaels, a former OSHA director, on a divisive directive about whether healthcare workers should wear N95 masks (KFF Health News)

Read: The New York Times broke down five key takeaways about the behind-the-scenes moves to overturn Roe v. Wade. (the New York Times)

Healthcare goes social: Dig into the healthcare industry’s top social trends in Hootsuite’s Social Trends 2024 report. Check out firsthand insights from marketers and consumers, industry inspo, and more in the full report.*

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