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“People want covid-19 to be in the rearview mirror,” one nursing home official says. Faced with a slow rollout of the updated covid vaccines, and without state mandates for workers to get vaccinated, most skilled nursing facilities are relying on persuasion to boost vaccination rates among staff and residents.
The Biden administration says a recently proposed minimum staffing standard would help ensure quality care, but nursing home leaders predict many rural facilities would struggle to meet it.
Congress returns from its summer recess with a long list of tasks and only a few work days to get them done. On top of the annual spending bills needed to keep the government operating, on the list are bills to renew the global HIV/AIDS program, PEPFAR, and the community health centers program. Meanwhile, over the recess, the Biden administration released the names of the first 10 drugs selected for the Medicare price negotiation program.
The proposal would require major hiring at the most sparsely staffed homes. But the proposal is already badly received by the nursing home industry, which claims it can’t boost wages enough to attract workers.
Research commissioned by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services analyzed only staffing levels below what experts have previously called ideal. Patient advocates have been pushing for more staff to improve care.
The May 11 expiration of the federal government’s pandemic emergency declaration will affect patient care across a broad range of settings, including telemedicine, hospitals, and nursing homes.
In-person mental health care is hard to arrange in rural nursing homes, so video chats with faraway professionals are filling the gap.
KHN gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.
Rather than simply reward top-performing facilities, the state’s Medicaid program will hand bonuses to nursing homes — even low-rated ones — for hiring more workers and reducing staff turnover.
Lawmakers are considering creating standards to set Medicaid reimbursement rates. But industry observers wonder whether the move would be too little, too late to bolster a beleaguered industry.
The industry has long relied on immigrants to bolster its ranks, and they’ll be critical to meeting future staffing needs, experts say. But as the baby boom generation fills beds, policymakers are slow to open new pathways for foreign workers.
As the federal government debates whether to require higher staffing levels at nursing homes, financial records show owners routinely push profits to sister companies while residents are neglected. “A dog would get better care than he did,” one resident’s wife said.
Many small-town care facilities that remain open are limiting admissions, citing a lack of staff, while a wave of others shutter. That means more patients are marooned in hospitals or placed far away from their families.
The death of a sharp but frail patriarch just days before Thanksgiving casts a shadow on a family’s holiday season.
Assisted living was meant to be a home-like setting where older adults could interact with other residents while receiving help with daily tasks such as bathing and dressing. But as the concept has become more popular, residents are now older and sicker than in the past, and a panel of experts is calling for more focus on their medical and mental health needs.
A Grand Junction program is training and retaining nurse and personal care aides in areas where the aging population is creating a need for them. But challenges remain for these workers.
An Indiana man's family sued a state-owned nursing home for alleged mistreatment. A U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case could determine the right of many Americans to sue government agencies.
Private Medicare Advantage health plans are increasingly ending coverage for skilled nursing or rehab services before medical providers think patients are healthy enough to go home, doctors and patient advocates say.
Four Seasons Health Care collapsed after years of private equity investors rolling in one after another to buy its business, sell its real estate, and at times wrest multimillion-dollar profits from it through complex debt schemes. The deal-making failed to account for the true cost of senior care.
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