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.
While the industry has increased wages by 27% since February 2020
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As of October 2023, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was up 18.7 percent compared to February 2020, the last month before the Covid-19 pandemic.
https://www.statista.com/chart/31264/change-in-us-consumer-prices-by-expenditure-category/
So barely a raise? Thanks so fucking much.
Because nurses were already severely underpaid and have been for a very long time…
Which is why percentage increases don’t tell the whole story.
Sure, but look at it this way… you have one of the most thankless nursing jobs available. You are in a horrible place under horrible conditions if it’s like the average nursing home and all of your patients are going to die on you. In exchange, you get low pay and a paltry raise compared to other nurses.
Of course it’s not going to draw more nurses in to the job.
Terwilliger is a high end nursing home in Portland and they have like 2 CNAs doing 24 hour shifts for $12/hr. The company CHARGES $22/hr for the CNA. They’ve been doing that since 2012. It’s a nightmare shift where if two residents needed help, one might not get it.
These people were paying $10k per month btw.
My old job paid me $18 an hour and paid my “boss” $12 an hour for me. I’m an independent contractor so my boss is my boss in nothing but a courtesy title. Yet he’s making almost as much off my work as I am. I suggested The client hire me directly, but the stupid laws in my country don’t allow that and favor the corporations and employers.
I wonder if there’s any way you could start a company and hire yourself out through it. Those extra ‘12 dollars’ would go toward the company coffers which you have access to. At least in the US a corporation is it’s own person so you could totally own it and hire yourself out through it.
I do have my own company, which is how I used to be a contractor and not an employee. That’s how they guy used to hire people to get away with not paying benefits. And where I live the government will defend a corporation’s non compete, so I can’t be hired directly and cut that guy out.
So instead I said fuck it and ended up just becoming an employee elsewhere, but now at least I get union, benefits. Pension, etc. So I’m much better off
4 years into a nationwide nursing shortage…
I have no idea where these nurses are coming from when people can’t afford to go to school for it, and existing nurses are quitting due to stress and low pay
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:
Charlene Harrington, a professor emeritus at the nursing school of the University of California-San Francisco, said: “In their unchecked quest for profits, the nursing home industry has created its own problems by not paying adequate wages and benefits and setting heavy nursing workloads that cause neglect and harm to residents and create an unsatisfactory and stressful work environment.”
This will help with that shortage, because nurses can actually have a little down time and will more likely stay in the career.
…
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.
Nursing homes get thousands a month for every patient there. They can afford to pay more, but that’s only half the problem. There simply aren’t enough nurses in the US, and their won’t be any time soon.
The nursing homes don’t even need more RN’s. RN’s take a lot of time and work and clinical hours to get certified. A whole lot.
They just need more competent staffing that’s allowed to be there and want to help care for patients, and recognize when something isn’t right. EMT-B’s could do a great job if things, would be more cost effective, and there’s a bigger hiring pool. Simply having more staff is needed more than just a couple more nurses. Emts can take vitals, move patients around, assist with patients taking meds, and recognize a lot of issues to bring to an RN’s attention.
