Nursing homes across the country are facing an unprecedented labor shortage because of the coronavirus pandemic — and there’s a particular proposal that’s expected to be handed down from the Biden Administration that would make the situation worse.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is on the verge of issuing an unfunded federal minimum staffing mandate for nursing homes as their attempt to solve our work force challenges, but this blanket regulation ignores the realities of the situation.
Nursing homes have dealt with work force challenges for years, but the pandemic intensified the situation.
In fact, nursing homes were the hardest hit health care sector when it comes to job losses. Over the course of the pandemic, our company lost 27 percent of our staff across our 22 facilities. Our recruitment efforts have been able to get half of the employees back we lost, but we still have ground to make up.
Nursing home operators want to be fully staffed, and we are doing everything to make that happen. But, despite our best efforts to create extraordinary recruitment and retention incentives, including giving pay raises, it is still difficult to hire. For our rural facilities, it’s especially challenging because there are even fewer available workers.
We further limit the amount of available workers because we choose not to use temporary staffing agencies and only use our own dedicated caregivers.
We are committed to this strategy because we know the quality with our staff is better than any temporary help, plus we decided to invest those dollars in our caregivers rather than temporary help.
Many nursing homes like ours have been forced to limit admissions at times because we don’t have enough caregivers to accept additional residents.
For example, some of our residents are patients who were in the hospital and come to us to rehabilitate. But because of a lack of work force, hospital patients can wait days or weeks for an open bed, creating a bottleneck that slows down the entire health-care system.
This bottleneck forces hospitals not to be able to take on critically ill patients as they do not have the beds or staff available to meet that need.
We are competing for a very limited number of qualified health-care employees that are also interested in working in our field.
Hospitals, physician offices, and even non-health care industries are our competitors, and because nursing homes are chronically underfunded, these competitors have more resources to win the talent.
Having raised wages and still facing obstacles attracting workers because of a lack of availability, how can we be expected to meet an arbitrary minimum staffing mandate? That’s why the Biden Administration’s proposal is out of touch — especially since this proposed regulation comes with no federal dollars behind it to support us in our hiring efforts.
During a nationwide labor shortage, it will only stretch our current employees even further and put access to care at risk for our seniors.
Instead of a blanket mandate from the federal government, our policy leaders in Washington need to enact policies that encourage workers to join the long-term care sector.
Plans such as loan forgiveness, affordable housing, and tax credits would incentivize workers to join this rewarding and fulfilling profession. Our company offers scholarships to staff who continue their education while working for us.
Reforming our immigration process will also help. We’ve brought 100 nurses from the Philippines to work in our facilities, with 60 more expected to come. However, bureaucratic red tape slows down efficiency. We need to prioritize nurses for work visas and expedite the process so we can bring them here much faster. These are the types of solutions that our sector needs — not a one-size-fits-all regulation.
Our seniors deserve a strong work force. We are doing our part, but we’re relying on our leaders in Washington to do theirs.
We need to work together on supportive policies that will actually help us attract the caregivers we need and prepare us for the future.
Scott Unverferth is the vice president of Operations at HCF Management, a nursing home organization located in Lima, Ohio, and serving residents across Ohio and Pennsylvania.
First Published September 2, 2023, 4:00 a.m.
