Fresh out of California’s Appropriations Committee and onto the state’s Assembly is California Senate Bill 525, which would increase the minimum wage to $25/hour for healthcare workers starting June 1, 2025. The bill would also require that salaried workers be paid the equivalent of at least 150% (200% in the original text of the bill) of this figure.
The bill was introduced by state Senator Maria Elena Durazo, who said that she kept hearing the refrain that there weren’t enough healthcare workers. She believes that the equivalent of $32,000 a year is unacceptable for workers who were essential during the pandemic and need more to survive.
A UC Berkely study on the impacts of the bill showed that nearly half a million workers would be affected by the increase including three quarters of home health workers and two thirds of workers in skilled nursing facilities. The study acknowledges the impact of factors like burnout that contribute to staffing shortages, but also references MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, which estimates that a single worker needs $44,179 in California to meet their basic costs of living.
The Berkely study included quotes from healthcare workers experiencing housing insecurity, increased workloads due to staffing issues and the phlebotomist who made the case for working in retail over healthcare: “If they start you out at $19 an hour you can make as much working at Target, but without working with needles or surrounded by death and illness.”
Reaction from healthcare providers and counties has been negative, with leaders saying they need more funding just to keep up with the status quo and that they’ve already had to make cuts to staff. Passing this bill, they say, will force decisions related to cutting services or even closures for the most strained providers.
It’s a difficult balancing act for hospitals to maintain as obviously solvency is paramount, but depressed wages in a high-stress environment aren’t going to fight the tide of healthcare resignations.
There are ways for hospitals to save money, however, that fight burnout and multiply the productivity of workers. Automation solutions like Extract’s HealthyData software eliminate the need for mundane tasks when receiving documentation like data entry, barcoding, adding separator sheets, and more. On top of that, an automated workflow gives downstream clinicians more complete and actionable discrete data for a patient rather than only a scan of a document when workers are struggling to keep up.
If you have incoming documents that give your healthcare organization a headache, we’d be happy to show you how you can do more with less and turn that headache into a case study on efficiency.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.