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The New Jersey Hospital Patient Care Staffing Quarterly Reports provide hospital patient care
staffing information to hospital patients and their families as required by law. [P.L 1971, c.136(C26:2H-1 et seq.)]
The New Jersey legislature passed this law on public disclosure of staffing levels in recognition of the fact that
hospital caregivers contribute to improved patient safety and health care outcomes.
By law, DOH issues quarterly reports for each general hospital that show average staffing
levels for a three-month period as follows:
- Ratios of patients to staff for each type of licensed inpatient unit (i.e., medical-surgical, pediatrics, intensive care, etc.)
- Daily number of staff and patients in the Emergency Department
- Daily number of Respiratory Care Practitioners.
To view quarterly reports, choose a hospital from SELECT below.
In viewing the reports, please note that:
- Hospitals may use a mix of personnel - such as Registered Nurses (RNs),
Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) and Unlicensed Assistive Personnel (UAP/nurse aides)
– to staff their units based on the type of patient care required and the severity of the patient’s condition.
For example, Intensive Care Units, which care for the most seriously ill patients, may be staffed entirely by Registered Nurses.
Across all units of the hospital, many New Jersey facilities choose to use greater numbers of RNs and fewer LPNs and UAPs.
In these cases, the hospital’s patient-to-staff ratio for LPNs and UAPs is very high.
- Staffing information should not be used to compare hospitals to each other or to state averages.
The quarterly reports do not take into account the patients’ need for services or the differences
in hospital policies and physical layouts, all of which may influence staffing requirements.
For example, one hospital may have patients requiring many services while patients in another hospital have fewer needs.
Hospitals are required to have a method of adjusting staffing levels based on these patient needs.
That methodology is presented on each staffing form that is posted daily in the hospital.
- The quarterly staffing report does not reflect all the care that a patient receives while in the hospital.
Many other hospital staff are involved in a patient’s care – such as advanced practice nurses,
social workers, student nurses, nutritionists, pharmacists, and in some situations, case managers –
and many are not listed in this report.
Quarterly reports are based on monthly average staffing levels hospitals report to DOH
and those monthly reports, in turn, are based on Daily Patient Care Staffing forms that
are posted in the facility. The Daily Patient Care Staffing forms are kept for three years
and they are available upon request to the hospitals.
The Instructions Manual
that hospitals use to calculate the staffing information is available to review technical information.
This manual includes the posting forms as well as the specific definitions used by hospitals to calculate the information submitted to the Department of Health.
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| Please SELECT a hospital
and click go to view unit specific nurse staffing data for the selected hospital.
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