Important New Rules to Improve Nursing Home Care
There are two new rules affecting patients in nursing homes and receiving home care, as well as the workers who care for them. The first sets minimum staffing requirements for facilities funded by Medicare and Medicaid, and the second concerns how home healthcare companies account for Medicaid funding.
About 1.2 million Americans live in federally funded nursing homes, which make up about four fifths of the nursing homes in the country. But the majority of those homes-about 75% of them-are understaffed. This is dangerous and isolating for patients and demoralizing for workers, who have high rates of burnout and turnover.
Now, nursing homes that receive federal funding will have to provide at least 3.48 hours of nursing care per resident every day, less than 4.1 hours the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services advocate but enough to require the hiring of about 12,000 registered nurses and 77,000 aides, at an annual cost of almost $7 billion.
Consumer organizations and labor unions pushed for the new rule, but nursing home operations strongly oppose the new mandate, saying it will force facilities to close because of a shortage of nurses.
