In case you missed it, the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the American Health Care Association (AHCA), the largest associations representing America’s hospitals and nursing homes, respectively, sent a joint letter earlier this week to Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), outlining concerns with a federal minimum staffing mandate for nursing homes.
Nursing homes are a pivotal partner to America’s hospitals, as they frequently provide short-term rehabilitative care to individuals following a hospital stay. However, as nursing homes struggle to find qualified staff due to nationwide labor shortages, many facilities have had to turn away new admissions—forcing hospitals to care for patients longer.
In the letter, AHA and AHCA cautioned CMS against an unfunded federal staffing mandate in the midst of this labor shortage and growing access to care crisis. AHA and AHCA write:
“As you are aware, the health care workforce continues to experience significant shortages while the demand for services has increased. In fact, nursing homes have experienced the worst job loss of any health care sector during the pandemic, with 210,000 jobs lost from February 2020 to December 2022. At the current pace of modest job growth, nursing homes would not return to pre-pandemic staffing levels until 2027…
“Federal staffing mandates for nursing homes in the middle of a labor crisis would exacerbate the current access to care crisis. We anticipate many nursing homes will be forced to further reduce their capacity and even close their doors if they are unable to meet these staffing mandates. This would accelerate the domino effect across the entire continuum of care and leave vulnerable seniors with fewer care options. Furthermore, mandating staffing levels is a simplistic, one-size-fits-all approach to the needs of complex and unique nursing home residents and patients.”
AHA and AHCA urged the Biden Administration to instead focus on investing in recruitment and retention programs that will bolster the health care workforce. They laid out several policy solutions in their letter, including apprenticeship programs for nursing assistants and other critical support staff and loan repayment policies.
The policy solutions in the letter mirror previous workforce reforms offered by AHCA in its nursing home reform agenda, the Care for Our Seniors Act. It’s time to make seniors and frontline caregivers a priority. Policymakers must focus on meaningful solutions that will help attract caregivers to long term care and strengthen the entire health care continuum.
Read the full letter HERE.