Staff Reports
Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, made an announcement that has the elder-care industry cussing and discussing. The Biden administration has locked in the first-ever regulations for nursing home staffing. This comes after a bunch of elders perished from COVID-19 and advocates for the elderly squawking about lousy living conditions in nursing homes. They claimed the old folks were starved, dehydrated, and just plain dirty.
Nursing home operators push back against Biden's new staffing mandates – Washington Examiner https://t.co/b64DsPMBQV
— Deenie (@deenie7940) April 22, 2024
Harris and the gang are making it so nursing homes that get Medicaid or Medicare cash have to provide at least 3.48 hours of care per resident each day. That means a joint with 100 residents needs at least two or three real-deal nurses, and 10 or 11 helpers, plus two more nursing staff for every shift. All these rules are supposed to fix the fowl care found in nursing homes that don’t have enough workers and make sure the employees don’t have to run around like chickens with their heads cut off.
The White House put out a sheet of facts saying that when nursing homes are short-handed, old folks might not get basics like baths, potty breaks, and chow. It also said it’s not safe if a resident has an emergency in those conditions.
The big shots who run nursing homes holler that they can’t find enough people to hire, and they’re scared this rule might make them close up shop. According to some brainiacs from the American Health Care Association, this rule would make nursing homes hire more than 100,000 extra nurses and helpers. That’s a hefty $6.8 billion bill! Them brainiacs also found that 94% of homes couldn’t keep up with one of the staffing rules.
The boss of the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living, Mark Parkinson, went on to say that Washington doesn’t know what’s really going on in the real world. He might as well have said, “Hey, government, get your head out of the clouds!” Nearly 100 House members wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and there’s a bipartisan Senate bill trying to shut this whole thing down. Everyone’s fretting that lots of nursing homes will have to shut their doors if these rules stick.
