Washington, DC – As one of the largest professions that employ the nurse assistant workforce, the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) today expressed their serious concerns with The National Nursing Assistant Survey: Improving the Evidence Base for Policy Initiatives to Strengthen the Certified Nursing Assistant Workforce, stating that the study failed to apply national Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recording criteria standards
, financially incentivized participants and used outdated data in its conclusions.
“The conclusions of the study, particularly the National Nursing Assistant Survey (NNAS) results on Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA) injuries and wages, are in direct contradiction with published federal data,” stated Bruce Yarwood, President and CEO of AHCA. “Most significantly, I question the use of self-reported out-of-date 2004 data that completely overlooks the BLS data, resulting in overstated conclusions to both the general public and national policy makers.”
In a letter to Marie R. Squillace, PhD, Disability, Aging and Long-Term Care Policy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Yarwood stated that the NNAS injury and wage information was “self-reported” by CNAs on telephone interviews conducted in 582 nursing facilities with 3,017 CNAs, out of more than 600,000 CNAs nationwide, all of whom received a $35 incentive. The self-reported information was never verified with other reliable federal data from the legally required employers Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) logs or any other BLS data sources, “making this a less than genuine and reliable CNA “occupational injury survey,” continued the long term care leader.
“It is misleading to use five year old data to inform “new policy direction” as indicated in the report, when there is more current data available to the public,” Yarwood commented. “The NNAS results are inaccurate when indicating that CNA wages are failing to improve, as the 2008 BLS data shows a 5.3 percent increase in wages for CNAs from 2007 BLS data, even in this economic downturn.”
Yarwood’s letter analyzed 2007 SOII data, which showed a total of 121,600 work-place related injuries occurred in nursing facilities across the entire staff. If the 121,600 total number of workplace related injuries is divided by 600,000 (the approximate number of CNAs working in nursing facilities in 2007), it can be assumed that the CNA work-place injury rate is 20.3 percent, as compared to the 2004 NNAS’ 59 percent statistic.
“AHCA/NCAL believe that supporting a stable and well-trained workforce is critical to assuring the highest quality of care for the millions of Americans who rely on critical long term care services,” Yarwood concluded. “Consumers deserve the highest quality care and services across the spectrum of health care settings, and employees deserve well-paid, rewarding work environments.”
The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) represent nearly 11,000 non-profit and proprietary facilities dedicated to continuous improvement in the delivery of professional and compassionate care provided daily by millions of caring employees to 1.5 million of our nation's frail, elderly and disabled citizens who live in nursing facilities, assisted living residences, subacute centers and homes for persons with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. For more information, please visit www.ahca.org or www.ncal.org.