S 7994: Adds home care visits to existing provisions of law prohibiting health care employers from requiring a nurse to work more than such nurse's regularly scheduled work hours, including regularly scheduled home care visits.

  
  STATE OF NEW YORK ________________________________________________________________________ 7994 2025-2026 Regular Sessions  IN SENATE May 15, 2025 ___________ Introduced by Sen. RAMOS -- read twice and ordered printed, and when printed to be committed to the Committee on Labor AN ACT to amend the labor law and the education law, in relation to the hours worked by nurses in home care settings The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem- bly, do enact as follows: 1 Section 1. Subdivision 1 of section 167 of the labor law, as amended 2 by chapter 815 of the laws of 2022, is amended to read as follows: 3 1. When used in this section: 4 a. "Health care employer" shall mean any individual, partnership, 5 association, corporation, limited liability company or any person or 6 group of persons acting directly or indirectly on behalf of or in the 7 interest of the employer, which provides health care services (i) in a 8 facility licensed or operated pursuant to article twenty-eight and arti- 9 cle thirty-six of the public health law, including any facility operated 10 by the state, a political subdivision or a public corporation as defined 11 by section sixty-six of the general construction law, or (ii) in a 12 facility operated by the state, a political subdivision or a public 13 corporation as defined by section sixty-six of the general construction 14 law, operated or licensed pursuant to the mental hygiene law, the educa- 15 tion law, the correction law, or section five hundred four of the execu- 16 tive law. 17 b. "Nurse" shall mean a registered professional nurse or a licensed 18 practical nurse as defined by article one hundred thirty-nine of the 19 education law who provides direct patient care. 20 c. "Regularly scheduled work hours", including regularly scheduled 21 home care visits, pre-scheduled on-call time and the time spent for the 22 purpose of communicating shift reports regarding patient status neces- 23 sary to ensure patient safety, shall mean those hours and home care 24 visits a nurse has agreed to work and is normally scheduled to work 25 pursuant to the budgeted hours and home care visits allocated to the EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets [ ] is old law to be omitted. LBD13095-01-5 
 S. 7994 2 1 nurse's position by the health care employer; and if no such allocation 2 system exists, some other measure generally used by the health care 3 employer to determine when an employee is minimally supposed to work, 4 consistent with the collective bargaining agreement, if any. Nothing in 5 this section shall be construed to permit an employer to use on-call 6 time as a substitute for mandatory overtime. 7 § 2. Section 6510-e of the education law, as added by chapter 493 of 8 the laws of 2008, is amended to read as follows: 9 § 6510-e. Nurses' refusal of overtime work. The refusal of a licensed 10 practical nurse or a registered professional nurse to work beyond said 11 nurse's regularly scheduled hours of work, including regularly scheduled 12 home care visits, shall not solely constitute patient abandonment or 13 neglect except under the circumstances provided for under subdivision 14 three of section one hundred sixty-seven of the labor law. 15 § 3. This act shall take effect on the ninetieth day after it shall 16 have become a law.