The Biden administration finalized nursing home staffing rules Monday that will require thousands of them to hire more nurses and aides — while giving them years to do so.
The new rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are the most substantial changes to federal oversight of the nation’s roughly 15,000 nursing homes in more than three decades. But they are less stringent than what patient advocates said was needed to provide high-quality care.
Spurred by disproportionate deaths from covid-19 in long-term care facilities, the rules aim to address perennially sparse staffing that can be a root cause of missed diagnoses, severe bedsores, and frequent falls.
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The rules primarily address staffing levels for three types of nursing home workers. Registered nurses, or RNs, are the most skilled and responsible for guiding overall care and setting treatment plans. Licensed practical nurses, sometimes called licensed vocational nurses, work under the direction of RNs and perform routine medical care such as taking vital signs. Certified nursing assistants are supposed to be the most plentiful and help residents with daily activities like going to the bathroom, getting dressed, and eating.
While the industry has increased wages by 27% since February 2020, homes say they are still struggling to compete against better-paying work for nurses at hospitals and at retail shops and restaurants for aides. On average, nursing home RNs earn $40 an hour, licensed practical nurses make $31 an hour, and nursing assistants are paid $19 an hour, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I know a lot of nurses that quit because they were ground into paste working at understaffed facilities.
It’s a vicious cycle where you have a nursing shortage, because you aren’t staffing enough, so the few that exist just quit.
This will help with that shortage, because nurses can actually have a little down time and will more likely stay in the career.
What you’re saying tracks with the article as well:
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If we had a supply of unemployed nurses that need a job…
We don’t. Which is why they’re all so overworked and leaving the field.
The solution was/is increasing the supply of nurses, not requiring more per facility when facilities already can’t find nurses.
Eh, but nursing home jobs are some of the worst, most underpaid positions for nurses. Just increasing supply won’t necessarily improve the amount of nurses in homes, as most of them try to keep the absolute legal minimum amount of nurses to increase profit.
Yeah, that’s part of the problem…
A hospital (while still shitty) is a better place for a RN than a nursing home.
So as long as hospitals are understaffed nursing homes will be.
This is like requiring all public schools to give each student a $2,000 laptop, but not giving them the funding to pay for it.
It sounds great, and it would be great.
It’s just not possible to comply with, so it’s going to lead to the most affordable homes being shut down.
Read the article. The implementation of this rule is slow, giving nursing homes years to comply. and 60% of nursing homes already meet the new requirement homes must meet within 2 years. They have an additional year afterwards to meet the new requirements, andthere are hardship exemptions for rural homes.
This is a problem that needs a solution, and if nursing homes with their high profit margins can’t meet these requirements? It’s because they don’t want to.