What can we expect from a staffing minimum?

Q: What can we anticipate out of the Facilities for Medicare & Medicaid Providers’ intention to concern new steering on minimal staffing measures for nursing houses?

A: Frankly, it means bother. To start addressing the minimal staffing requirement, CMS added new necessities for surveyors to include using Payroll Based mostly Journal staffing information of their inspections.

This can determine potential noncompliance with CMS nurse staffing requirements, equivalent to lack of a registered nurse for eight hours every day, or lack of licensed nursing for twenty-four hours a day. This steering goals to uncover cases of inadequate staffing and can, allegedly, yield increased high quality care.

CMS additionally intends to concern a proposal in 2023 on a minimal staffing measure. In April, CMS issued its 2023 Expert Nursing Facility Potential Fee System Proposed Rule. It was then CMS introduced it was seeking input on the consequences of direct care staffing guidelines to enhance the LTC necessities for participation and promote considerate, knowledgeable staffing plans and choices inside services.

CMS acquired greater than 3,000 feedback on the rule, with one-third calling on CMS to contemplate present staffing shortages and supply extra monetary assets to services earlier than even contemplating a minimal staffing commonplace.

Apparently, the commenters are higher than CMS in relation to comprehending the folly of imposing minimal staffing ranges with out sufficient cures to deal with structural points inflicting staffing shortages. They acknowledge these structural points existed lengthy earlier than COVID-19 and have solely been exacerbated by the pandemic.

We must always anticipate that any minimal staffing necessities will additional burden operators and embolden trial attorneys who search to take advantage of these necessities to inflame juries.

From the September 2022 Issue of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News