Pushback against a Biden administration nursing home staffing mandate is intensifying this week as some of the state’s most powerful healthcare advocacy groups are joined by members of Georgia’s congressional delegation to speak out in opposition.
The mandate would force nursing homes to spend a minimum number of hours with each resident, as well as have a 24-hour registered nurse (RN) on site permanently. Those requirements don’t take into account Licensed Practical Nurses, social workers, or other healthcare professionals.
The Georgia Health Care Association (GHCA) was quick to push back on the federal mandate, commissioning a study that found that it would have devastating consequences on the state’s already-strained healthcare system. According to the study from professional services firm CLA (CliftonLarsenAllen, LLP) Georgia nursing homes would need to hire an estimated 3,652 additional full-time employees (2,754 nurse aides and 898 RNs). That would cost the state’s nursing homes an additional $187 million per year, money that nursing home staffers say simply does not exist.
“This analysis underscores that Georgia’s nursing homes cannot meet this staffing mandate as it’s currently proposed without the proper funding and workforce programs,” said GHCA President Chris Downing. “Nursing homes across our state continue to do everything they can with limited resources to attract new caregivers to the field but continue to face challenges due to the sheer lack of available and qualified workers. We will continue to sound the alarm that Georgia’s seniors are the ones that will suffer the unintended consequences of this flawed policy and urge the administration to reconsider this impossible standard.”
It’s not just healthcare professionals and their advocates who are adamantly opposed to the mandate.
This week a bipartisan group of close to 100 U.S. House members signed a letter calling on the Biden administration to reconsider the ruling, stating that they have “serious concerns,” particularly with the fact that the mandate would force nursing homes to fund a new work force with healthcare workers that do not currently exist.
From the letter:
Highlighted in the proposed rule is the fact that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “there are roughly 235,900 fewer health care staff working in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities compared to March of 2020.” Instead of moving forward with a regulatory mandate that would exacerbate staffing shortages, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) should collaborate and work alongside nursing homes across the country to find innovative solutions to improve the provision of care for seniors and other vulnerable populations.
Georgia U.S. Reps. Buddy Carter and Austin Scott were among those who signed the letter.
On Wednesday the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing to discuss the mandate, featuring testimony from nurses, staffing professionals, and healthcare advocates. During the hearing Carter, a pharmacist by trade who often worked in nursing homes, voiced his support for nurses and was direct in his serious concerns over the proposal.
“I think that these policies that are being promulgated here are horrible,” said Carter. “This is going to lead to nursing homes closing. In fact almost 80 percent of facilities would be forced to close if this went through. And that shows you just the tone-deafness of HHS and CMS in trying to propose something like this. They have no clue, no clue what I’ve seen in my years as a consulting pharmacist.”
