The Biden Administration has announced it will impose new minimum staffing rules for nursing homes. But the regulations appear to give facilities time to meet the requirements. Separately, the Administration also is requiring that home care agencies allocate at least 80 percent of their Medicaid payments to staff compensation. States would have flexibility to adjust the rules for small and [...]
Do nursing home owners understate the profits they report to federal regulators by shifting income to related businesses? Two academic experts in nursing home finance found that in one state 63 percent of margins are hidden this way. To put it another way, only 37 percent of true nursing home profits are reported to federal regulators. A new paper by [...]
The federal government wants to know more, and wants consumers to know more, about who owns nursing homes. It is about time. And it may help identify some of the worst actors who pollute the nursing home industry. However, without easier access to this new information, I’m not sure how helpful it will be for prospective residents and their families. [...]
The US is desperately short of nurses, personal care aides, and other direct care workers who help frail older adults and younger people with disabilities manage their days. Instead of dealing with the problem, policymakers have, predictably, devolved into their usual partisan blame-mongering. Watch, if you can, this recent hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the worker [...]
It hardly is news that nursing homes are in trouble. Consumers think they are unsafe; nurses, aides, and other staff are reluctant to work for them; hundreds of facilities are shutting and others are closing beds and even entire wings because they can’t staff them. How can these multiple problems be fixed? The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) [...]
In a long-awaited and highly controversial decision, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed that nursing homes provide at least three hours of staff time daily for every patient or resident. Would it meaningfully improve care at nursing facilities? Not by much. The rule would require facilities to provide enough staff to deliver 33 minutes (.55 [...]
As the Covid-19 public health emergency ends, many older adults who need a post-hospital stay in a skilled nursing facility (SNF) will be in for an unpleasant surprise: Traditional Medicare may not pay. The change, one among dozens that affect older adults, restores rules from before the pandemic. But they are complicated and will shock many patients and their families, [...]
Nursing homes have been pressing for more money from the state and federal governments, by far their biggest payers. Now they are close to getting it, but the extra payments may come with costly new obligations, especially related to staffing. The federal government is about to increase Medicare payments for skilled nursing care and, at the same time, states are [...]
The Covid-19 pandemic shined a light on how hard it is for long-term care facilities such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities to balance residents’ health risks with their desire for independence and autonomy. A few have found the secret sauce. Most have not. A new study by the RAND Corporation, a California research firm, shows how facilities can [...]
We know how the Covid-19 pandemic killed older adults. We are still learning about its other effects on seniors. And the picture is both complex and often difficult to look at. A new study by Michael Barnett of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and colleagues (paywall) finds that residents of nursing homes with active cases of [...]