President Joe Biden’s administration will for the first time dictate minimum staffing levels for nursing homes in response to systemic problems that came to light with the mass deaths caused by COVID-19, it was reported Friday.
It is a regulatory standard that advocates for seniors and people with disabilities had been calling for for decades, but the proposed threshold is much lower than they had hoped. It also drew the ire of the business sector, which said it is an impossible mandate to meet.
Biden made the promise in his 2022 State of the Union address, and the details were revealed as many Americans have kicked off the Labor Day long weekend.
“Establishing minimum staffing guidelines for nursing homes will improve resident safety,” said Health Secretary Xavier Becerra. “When facilities are understaffed, residents suffer.”
The American Health Care Association (AHCA), the industry’s business chamber, called the proposal “incomprehensible,” and argued that it will exacerbate existing problems and cost nursing homes billions of dollars.
“We hope to convince the administration never to finalize this rule that lacks substance, funding and realism,” said AHCA President Mark Parkinson, a former Democratic governor of Kansas.
The proposed rules, which begin a period of public debate and will take years to take full effect, require staffing equivalent to three hours per resident per day, with half an hour of that time to be spent by registered nurses. The standards also require the presence of a registered nurse 24 hours a day.
Nursing homes average 3.6 hours of staffing per resident per day, according to government reports, and registered nurses over half an hour.
But the government insists that most of the country’s approximately 15,000 nursing homes, which house 1.2 million people, should increase their staffing levels under the new rules.