\n\tJordan Rau, KFF Health News<\/span><\/p>\n

The Biden administration last year promised to establish minimum staffing levels for the nation\u2019s roughly 15,000 nursing homes. It was the centerpiece of an agenda to overhaul an industry the government said was rife with substandard care and failures to follow federal quality rules.<\/p>\n

But a research study the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services commissioned to identify the appropriate level of staffing made no specific recommendations and analyzed only staffing levels lower than what the previous major federal evaluation had considered best, according to a copy of the study reviewed Monday by KFF Health News. Instead, the new study said there was no single staffing level that would guarantee quality care, although the report estimated that higher staffing levels would lead to fewer hospitalizations and emergency room visits, faster care, and fewer failures to provide care.<\/p>\n

Patient advocates said the report was the latest sign that the administration would fall short of its pledge to establish robust staffing levels to protect the 1.2 million Americans in skilled nursing facilities. Already, the administration is six months behind its self-imposed deadline of February<\/a> to propose new rules. Those proposals, which have not been released, have been under evaluation since May<\/a> by the Office of Management and Budget. The study, dated June 2023, has not been formally released either, but a copy was posted<\/a> on the CMS website.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s honestly heartbreaking,\u201d said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for nursing home patients in New York state. \u201cI just don\u2019t see how this doesn\u2019t ultimately put more residents at risk of neglect and abuse. Putting the government\u2019s imprimatur on a standard that is patently unsafe is going to make it much more difficult for surveyors to hold facilities accountable for the harm caused by understaffing nursing homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For months, the nursing home industry has been lobbying strenuously against a uniform ratio of patients to nurses and aides. \u201cWhat is clear as you look across the country is every nursing home is unique and a one-size-fits-all approach does not work,\u201d said Holly Harmon, senior vice president of quality, regulatory, and clinical services at the American Health Care Association, an industry trade group.<\/p>\n

Nursing home groups have emphasized the widespread difficulty in finding workers willing to fill existing certified nursing assistant jobs, which are often grueling and pay less than what workers can make at retail stores. Homes say their licensed nurses are often drawn away by other jobs, such as better-paying hospital positions. \u201cThe workforce challenges are real,\u201d said Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge, an association that represents nonprofit nursing homes.<\/p>\n

The industry has also argued that if the government wants it to hire more workers it needs to increase the payments it makes through state Medicaid programs, which are the largest payor for nursing home care. Advocates and some researchers have argued that nursing homes, particularly for-profit ones, can afford to pay employees more and hire additional staff if they forsake some of the profits they give investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, facilities haven\u2019t put all the dollars back into direct care over the years,\u201d said David Grabowski, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. \u201cBut for certain facilities, it\u2019s going to be a big lift to pay for\u201d higher staffing levels, he said in an interview last week.<\/p>\n

The administration last week declined to discuss the status of its rule. \u201cThe Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is committed to holding nursing homes accountable for protecting health and safety for all residents, and adequate staffing is critical to this effort,\u201d CMS press secretary Sara Lonardo said in an email. \u201cWe look forward to releasing our proposals, as well as the nursing home staffing study, soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study has been widely anticipated, both because of the central role the administration said it would play in its policy and because the last major CMS study, conducted in 2001, had concluded that nursing home care improves as staffing increases up to the level of about one worker for every six residents. The formal metric for that staffing level was 4.1 staff hours per resident per day, which is calculated by dividing the number of total hours worked by nurses and aides on duty daily by the number of residents present each day.<\/p>\n

CMS never adopted that staffing ratio and instead gave each nursing home discretion to determine a reasonable staffing level. Regulators rarely cite nursing homes for insufficient staffing, even though independent researchers have concluded low staffing is the root of many nursing home injuries. Too few nurse aides, for instance, often means immobile residents are not repositioned in bed, causing bedsores that can lead to infection. Low staffing also is often responsible for indignities residents face, such as being left in soiled bedsheets for hours.<\/p>\n

The new research was conducted by Abt Associates, a regular contractor for CMS that also performed the 2001 study. But the report, in an implicit disagreement with its predecessor, concluded there was \u201cno obvious plateau at which quality and safety are maximized or \u2018cliff\u2019 below which quality and safety steeply decline.\u201d Abt did not immediately respond to requests for comment on its study.<\/p>\n

The study evaluated four minimum staffing levels, all of which were below the 4.1 daily staff hours that the prior study had identified as ideal. The highest was 3.88 daily staff hours. At that level, the study estimated 0.6% of residents would get delayed care and 0.002% would not get needed care. It also said that staffing level would result in 12,100 fewer hospitalizations of Medicare residents and 14,800 fewer emergency room visits. The report said three-quarters of nursing homes would need to add staff to meet that level and that it would cost $5.3 billion extra each year.<\/p>\n

The lowest staffing level the report analyzed was 3.3 daily staffing hours. At that level, the report said, 3.3% of residents would get delayed care and 0.04% would not get needed care. That level would reduce hospitalizations of Medicare residents by 5,800 and lead to 4,500 fewer emergency room visits. More than half of nursing homes would have to increase staff levels to meet that ratio, the report said, and it would cost $1.5 billion more each year.<\/p>\n

Charlene Harrington, a professor emeritus of nursing at the University of California-San Francisco, said CMS \u201csabotaged\u201d the push for sufficiently high staffing through the instructions it gave its contractor. \u201cEvery threshold they looked at was below 4.1,\u201d she said. \u201cHow can that possibly be a decent study? It\u2019s just unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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