CMC proposes increased staffing standards for nursing home

The nation’s most thinly staffed nursing homes would be required to hire more workers under new rules proposed last week by the Biden administration, the greatest change to federal nursing home regulations in three decades (Source: “Federal Officials Propose New Nursing Home Standards to Increase Staffing,” New York Times, Sept. 1).

The proposed standard was prompted by the industry’s troubled performance earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, when 200,000 nursing home residents died. But the proposal falls far short of what both the industry and patient advocates believe is needed to improve care for most of the 1.2 million Americans in nursing homes.

The proposal, by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), would require all facilities to increase staff up to certain minimum levels, but it included no money for nursing homes to pay for the new hires. CMS estimated that three-quarters of the nation’s 15,000 homes would need to add staff members. But the increases at many of those facilities would be minor, as the average nursing home already employs nurses and aides at, or very close to, the proposed levels.